Bobby Berk Says His ‘Queer Eye' Salary Was 'Basically Nothing'

Cosmopolitan

2 days ago

Reality TV stardom is not for the weak. Just ask Bobby Berk, who recently revealed that Queer Eye paid 'basically nothing' for the first two seasons. In fact, he was making so little off the Netflix show, it actually hurt him financially.
'The first two seasons, I definitely lost money being on the show,' said the interior design expert during a recent appearance on Networth and Chill with Your Rich BFF podcast. 'Because, I mean, they were paying us basically nothing.'
Bobby's assessment is tough, but fair when you consider the entertainment landscape. When the Fab Five—Bobby, Antoni Porowski, Tan France, Karamo Brown, and Jonathan Van Ness—they weren't paid like the stars they would become. In 2018, Variety reported that they were each paid $7,500 per episode for the first two seasons, which evens out to $60,000 per season—a far cry from the riches paid to stars of scripted series.
But it wasn't so much the pay that was the problem, but the time commitment that cost Bobby money. 'The amount of money that I was losing from not running my company and being gone because we had to move away' also affected his bottom line, he said. 'We were gone for five months, and so half the year we were gone, and then we were on just constant press tours.'
Queer Eye, of course, became an instant hit, and the stars were able to renegotiate for seasons 3 and 4, which is when Bobby says he probably 'broke even.'
But even in the later seasons, Bobby said, the Fab 5 still weren't making that much money. 'To be frank, they never really paid us well. You know, compared to what they pay scripted stars, we made single digit percentage,' he said. 'Obviously, what it did, though, was open doors for working with brands, working with companies.'
Bobby left Queer Eye after eight seasons, and while it sounds like he wishes they had been paid more, he's still grateful for the success of the show and the exposure it granted him and his business. Overall, he called the experience 'absolutely' worth it. 'It was tough the first few seasons, but the doors that it has opened for other things—absolutely,' he said. 'You can't pay for that type of exposure.'