Queer Eye’s Bobby Berk on productivity and home renovations – Fast Company

To close observers of Queer Eye, design expert Bobby Berk seems to have the most taxing job of the Fab Five. While Jonathan Van Ness cuts hair and preaches the gospel of beard oil, and Tan France fixes a withering eye on the makeover subjects closet, Berk spends most of an episode offscreen. By the end of each installmentjust days after the Fab Five first meet their subjectBerk has torn up floorboards, gutted the kitchen, and repainted the entire house.

Berk, who has run his own design consultancy and retail business for years, says the speed and scope of Queer Eye makeovers would be impossible if it werent for his background in home building. His latest venture, a furniture collection with A.R.T. Furniture, is a natural evolution of his design career.

We caught up with Berk recently to talk about the line and how he manages such ambitious projects on Queer Eye.

Fast Company: You recently released a collection with A.R.T. Furniture and its new CEO, Jeff Young. What inspired the line?

Bobby Berk: The inspiration for the furniture line comes from fans that watch Queer Eye and constantly message me, I wish that you could pick out all the furniture for my house. I wish you could help me design my house. I had manufactured some of my own furniture for my stores, but I had never really done a mass line that was attainable for almost anyone.

I think of your home like your phone charger. You need to get a full charge or youre not going to make it through the rest of the day or the next day. Putting things in your home that make you happy, relaxed, and grounded can really have a huge impact on your mental health.

So I really wanted to make a line that translated that and made it affordable. I thought it would be kind of an asshole thing to get on Queer Eye every day and preach that changing your home can change your lifebut only if youve got a lot of money. I wanted it to be good quality furniture that youre going to keep for years.

FC: You said this feels like a natural evolution. Can you talk about what brought you to this point in your career, and how your background prepared you for an opportunity like Queer Eye?

BB: I dont even know if Id really call it a career. Every single job that Ive ever had, every part of my career, has always been in entertainment, even though it technically wasnt what you would traditionally think of as entertainment.I was a server at Applebees. As a server, I was an entertainer. I was giving those customers not just food, but an experience. The [better] experience youd give them, the more tips youd get.

Working at the Gap, it was about an experience. I would give [women who came in] the best gay best friend helping you pick out your clothes experience you could have. People enjoyed it, and they came back for it. Even selling long-distance service as a telemarketerthat was also entertainment. I would use different accents and be different characters.

People always say theres no way we get those houses done from Tuesday to Friday. And the thing is, we do.

So it was all about the experience that I was giving people, no matter what industry I was in. And I think that has helped me with Queer Eye. Maya Angelou said that people will never remember what you said to them. They will only remember how you made them feel. People may not remember exactly what I said on the show or exactly what Jonathan said, but theyll remember how it made them feel inside.

FC: I want to talk about how youre so productive on Queer Eye, because you seem downright superhuman. How do you manage to pack an entire renovation into just a few days?

BB: My planning for an episode usually starts a few weeks before. There have been episodes where there was no planning available. But usually our heroes are cast a few weeks before we meet them, so my team is usually able to go to the heros home beforehand. I dont meet them, but I at least check out their space and get basic measurements. We often give them new flooring or window shades or kitchen cabinets, and those are the type of things where there is no way to do it the week of. So if we are planning on doing a big renovation, those things do have to be planned out. So we will usually go out there a week or two before, and well figure out a game plan on the major things.

Before we start filming, my team has found a [makeshift] warehouse, and we basically turn it into a big store of our own. We pre-order tons of art and accessories and candles and pillows and bedding, and we just line this warehouse full of stuff that I could possibly use. That way, were not running around the city the day were filming and going to all these different stores. Often I will figure out the main pieces of furniture that I need because for the most part, stores dont stock things anymore. You cant just go into a West Elm and be like, I want this sofa.

FC: But you do usually incorporate personal elements into your decor. How do you weave that into your process, especially if youre stocking your warehouse ahead of time?

BB: The type of art that we order is so random and so crazy. Sometimes well pick things and Im like, There is no way were ever going to use this. This is awful. But then Ill get to a heros home and Im like, That awful piece of art that I would never have imagined I would ever use in a home is so perfect for them. Itll be something weird and quirky that Ive learned about their personality, and when they see that [art], theyre like, Oh my god, you get me!

For example, AJ in season one who came out to his stepmother. I [found out] that the very first trip he and his boyfriend took together was to Miami. So in his bedroom, I put up a piece of wall art that had MIA, the Miami airport code. He saw that and was like, This reminds me of the first trip we took. And I said, Thats exactly why its on the wall. Those are the type of things that I listen for.

When you come in and you completely change somebodys home, [you] dont want them to feel like theyre not walking into their own home. I want there to be so many personal things that theyre like, This is my home, and this is exactly the way I wouldve done it if I knew how to put things together like this. We accomplish a lot of that with art and family photos. If they dont have photos, I have great people on my team. Their job is to start knocking on doors and calling their families. Sometimes, that is happening even before, as our producers are interviewing their family members and finding out their story.

FC: So theres a lot of preparation that goes into each episode behind the scenes. How long are you allotted for what we actually see on Queer Eye?

BB: For the most part, our [filming] schedule usually is Tuesday to Friday. So on Tuesday we meet them; we call that ambush day. And thats when I truly start digging through their personal stuff and finding stuff out about them. On my first visits to their home, I dont dig through their stuff. Its really just sizing the actual space up. When you see me find something interesting in their home the day we meet them, I want that to be real. I dont want to be like, Ooh, so producers, I found this picture thats probably gonna make them cry. Im going to have it here, so be sure to have a camera on me when I find it. There are shows out there like that, but weve always been very, very aware of not doing that. I really do want to be shocked or disgusted for real that day when you are seeing it for the first time on TV.

People always say theres no way we get those houses done from Tuesday to Friday. And the thing is, we do. All the clean-out that you see, which often can take the entire first day or more, and all of the construction, painting, flooring, furniture installation, drapes, artthat really is done between Tuesday and Friday. The preparation is in order for us to have everything we need to get that accomplished.

FC: And while youre doing that preparation, youre also working on other episodes, right?

BB: Yes, very much so. Its not like the week before youre filming, you have nothing to do and youre just prepping for that episodewhile were installing, were also still prepping for the next week and the week after. Were making sure that the things that we ordered are arriving, and thats a whole job in its own, handling the tracking and the logistics and the project managing. At any given time, were working on [up to] four heroes. Were installing one, and were prepping for two to three more.

If I didnt have that experience, I think Queer Eye would have definitely broken me.

[In] season one and two, I just had one team, which made it really, really hard. Season three and four, we learned that I would have Tommywho was like my main man and had been with me through all of season one and twoand another team leader. So one week I would be installing a heros home with Tommy, and then at the same time, I would be preparing for the next weeks episode, [which the other team leader] Nate would be project managing, and then it would rotate. The next week, Tommy would be preparing for the next episode as I was installing with Nate and his team. That made life way easier, so weve become a very well-oiled machine now. Tommy also did this on Extreme Home Makeover, so he was really great about teaching me the ins and outs of how to prepare for this show.

FC: How structured are your filming days? Do you have a daily routine?

BB: Theres just no way. You have to roll with the punches because with installation, you never know what youre going to run into. In season two, when we were doing some construction for [Mayor Ted Terry], we ran into a huge termite infestation, which he didnt know about. So that threw the schedule off. Also, a retailer was supposed to be sending a huge shipment of furniture that we ordered, which never showed up. So that week, we actually did have to send out multiple cars to stores all over the city and try to pull as much furniture off their floors as we possibly could to furnish the house.

In season three with Joey Greene: On Wednesday night there was a big storm, and it knocked a tree down, and it took the power out for the whole campground. We were in there with flashlights trying to paint and get stuff done in the dark.

Most of the time as a designer, youre doing a home over a period of a year, and youre doing the install over a few weeks or few months. But my design firm actually focuses on working with home builders, so we will design five homes in a community at once. Granted, well design those sometimes over a year from start to finish, from when we first look at the architectural plans to breaking ground. But when we install them, well sometimes install five homesand when I say install the whole home, I mean everythingin less than a week. Well pull in with a few tractor trailer loads for these homes, and well knock them out in a few days. And when we install these model homes, we usually start installing on a Monday, and 9 times out of 10, their grand opening will be that Saturday. So its not like we can [say] we need a few extra days. If I didnt have that experience, I think Queer Eye would have definitely broken me.

FC: Can you share any details on your budget per episode? Because the challenge for you isnt just maximizing your productivity, but doing so within a budget.

BB: Our budget is way lower than you think it is. We really have to stretch the dollar. I cant share much, because I have before, and I got yelled at. But the budget is low.I would say 80% of my budget is eaten up on construction. This is just a random number, but lets say that normally installing a floor over a couple of weeks costs a dollar. I need that floor installed in a couple of hours, if not overnight. So what they would normally charge a dollar for, theyll charge me $50 for because they need to send in 10 people from the construction team to get that done. So my construction costs are hugely inflated just because of the manpower they have to throw at it to get it done in the time that we need.

In the very beginning, we werent even allowed to say what the show was, so wed have to call up retailers and say, Were doing a makeover show and wondering if you want to partner with us.

FC: Im surprised to hear that was the case, even with Netflix behind you.

BB: I understand because having my own retail stores before, I would have shows contact us all the time wanting things for free. And [most of the time], it wasnt beneficial. The Housewives used to contact us all the time and said, You should do our house. Its going to give you so much exposure. And no, thats not the kind of exposure I want.

All of us really were cast and hired because were experts in our field. Especially in the beginning, it really took a village. Not that our producers arent amazingbut it really took us working with our producers to leverage the relationships we had in our real careers to make the show happen. For season three and four, even though my furniture collection with A.R.T. wasnt out yet, they provided 50% or more of the furniture we needed.

FC: Now that youve done this for a few years, is there anything youve found especially surprising about being a part of Queer Eye?

BB: I would say the biggest surprise was that it was successful. None of us thought it would be. We were like, Oh, this is cute. Well film for five months and then go back to our normal lives. That didnt happen. Were the luckiest little boys in the world, we always say. I think the success is due to the social impact that weve been able to have on peoplejust the philosophy of loving yourself and taking care of yourself and accepting yourself.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Queer Eye's Bobby Berk on productivity and home renovations - Fast Company