You're listening to I'm on the May podcast. When I contracted each IV, I was really an terrible relationship with meth and I was just relapsing on meth and using meth. And for a lot of people that have meth addiction are engaged in that kind of like chem sex queer like culture. It is so pervasive and it is just everywhere you look. And so I think that contracting HIV saved me because that was the wake up call that
got me to get away from meth. And I think that if I hadn't gotten HIV, I would have just kept relapsing and at one point one of those would have killed me, Like I would have overdosed at some point. I mean, I was like I was doing it all in all the ways. Hi.
Everyone, it's Naima Brown, executive producer of No Filter.
Here.
I'm stepping in and as your special guest host on this episode while Kate enjoys her summer break, and I couldn't be more thrilled about today's guest. Jonathan van Ness is one of the most recognizable and beloved people on reality television. He's the heart of Queer Eye, the creator of Getting Curious, a New York Times best selling author, a comedian, a hair care founder, an activist, and someone who has built a global audience just by being completely
and unapologetically themselves. But the Jonathan you're about to hear today isn't just the larger than life performer. It's the real person underneath the fame, the one who has survived some incredibly dark chapters and who speaks with extraordinary honesty about them. We talk about the addictions Jonathan is battled, including drug use and sex addiction, and the ways those addictions intertwined with shame, secrecy, trauma, and the deep need
to feel worthy of love. They tell me about relapse, recovery, the terrifying moments when they didn't know who they were anymore, and the people, the practices, and some pets that pulled them back into the world. We talk about joy to where they find it now, how they protect it, and how they continue to show up in a world that has asked them to be an educator, a role model, an activist, a comfort and a source of light, all while they've been trying to navigate their own inner landscape.
Here is Jonathan van Ness. Jonathan van Ness, or is I like to think Jonathan Van Yes, welcome to No Filter.
Thanks for having me.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
I actually wanted to start this conversation somewhere a little bit differently, and we might not even use this, but I just did want to have this kind of moment of connection with you because I've been so steeped. I've been following you for a very long time, but obviously for the past few weeks. I just I've been everywhere I go, I've got you in my ears, reading your words,
just very steeped in you. And one of the things I've heard you talk about is how and I know this was back with the publication of your first book, but how sometimes interviews could be retraumatizing or triggering, and I just wanted to ask if there's anything you want me to know about how your day's been so far, about where you are in life, any boundaries you want me to be clued into so that this can be a great experience for you.
It's so funny that you say that, because yesterday I was doing this interview and I all of a sudden started getting like grilled on like World HIV Day and what I think we need to do internationally for like HIV policy, which I'm happy to talk to, but I was just marveling at myself because I was like, Wow, I've gotten so good at just like here to chat comedy, but I'm going to talk about HIV because it's all one big gorgeous ball of human experience or we're slaying it.
So yeah, no, you can. You can go wherever I think will be good. I feel good today. Thank you.
It's so interesting, johnath Than, because feel like this has kind of just grounded us right where I really wanted us to kind of again, which is in the joy and the laughter and just the the openness that you bring to everything that you have done in the public eye.
You've shared so much of yourself with us, with the world, and not just in your books, but in ten Seasons of Queer Eye, in your own podcast Getting Better, and in your stand up comedy performances which are incredible, and now you're touring with a show called Hot and Healed, which I love because I feel like that's actually such a great container for this conversation and for talking about the incredible life that you have lived and are still living.
Because as anyone who's been following you would know you haven't always felt hot and healed? Are you feeling hot and healed today?
I am, although you know what makes me laugh. I came up with this title because I was like, I need a fun alliteration, and it was like twenty twenty four and I didn't even know I was going to start taking a GLP one yet. And then I did start taking one, I accidentally lost like seventy pounds. I've never been so muscily in my life because I got kind of addicted to like Lagree pilates, and so now I could just like kind of I think I could
survive on Mageddon. Frankly, like I am just so like I've never been so strong on this like pilates table, and so now I'm kind of realizing brand wise, people are like, oh, he thinks he's like hot and healed because there was like a globe, and I'm like, no, I was always super hot and healed. I well, I've always been healing. I wouldn't say I'm healed. It's part of what the set's about is that it's really a journey,
not a destination, this whole healing healed thing. But yeah, I just want to make clear I always thought I was really cute, and I am really cute now, and I was also cute when I named this who are Hot and Healed? Last year? I just who knew that the weight was going to come off that fast? And I already made the sweatshirts and they say hot and healed, so I couldn't change it. And you know, sometimes I
guess I guess I could have pivoted halfway through. I don't know, but yeah, I feel hot and healed, but I guess I already did.
Yes.
And I have a sense, Jonathan, that with the work that you have done internally, that wherever you might be a year from now, wherever you might be ten years from now, I'm actually really excited about, Like what what's like an eighty year old Jonathan van Ness going to be all about? And I think you're going to be hot and healed then in whatever form do you do you ever think about old age and what.
What you want that to look like.
I want to get there. Yeah, I want to get there. I know that much. I would like to be like a blend of Dorothy Blanche and Rose Ovs, except for I do want a needle point. I don't think the three of them had any crafts or their characters like had that new maybe did one of them cross stitch. I just want to make sure I'm needle pointing having more pets. They weren't a pet household, so that wouldn't work for me. But they no, so that wouldn't have
That won't work. But hopefully there's gonna be needle pointing and cheesecake and late night chats. But oh, oh, I can't. Oh. I don't want to be a widow though. I need my husband to be there. So like my husband me and then like some other fun friends eating cheesecake. Hopefully.
I love this idea. It's an alternate version of The Golden Girls. Where there's pets, where there's your lovely mark, where there's you know, maybe more plants, and I don't know, maybe not Florida.
Yeah where they were I think.
Yeah, you're not Florida. I don't think we'll be able to do Florida.
No, We'll pick somewhere else.
Yeah.
I want to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side, you know, from kind of imagining what really old Jonathan might look like, all the way back to the beginning of your story. You grew up in a really conservative Midwestern town called Quincy, Illinois. You describe yourself as having been a really sem little kid who loved scarves, loved nail polish. And that's not something that the adults in your life nurtured. It's something that you coped a lot of shame and internalized a lot of
shame around and about. And you know, you've spoken so extensively about that experience and about that time in your life. And I suppose what I really want to know is where did that commitment to self expression that you've always had in spite of or despite the fact that that sometimes put you in the crosshairs of that externalized shame, or it cost you sometimes in the social or in
the family sphere. Yet you seem to have never been willing to be anything other than the fullest expression of yourself. Where do you think that that came from.
It's a really good question. I think maybe watching figure skating and gymnastics too young, like before, I just you know, just seeing these women express themselves with such like ferocity, I just was like, ah, but I just that's like a joke. My brain always goes there because I was just so obsessed with it as a child and still am. But I think I do think that there was just like an innate sense. I think that even if like my family had been from New York City, I think
I still would have been exactly how I am. I just there was a need to dance and be free and ask a lot of questions and be a chatterbox. And so I just think I've always been this person, and I think I just am so excited that I get to nurture that in ermy that didn't have the
nurturing then but has it now. And I think so much of my mission is like trying to help other And I talk about this a lot and over the top, like I want to help other little jbns, like other little you know, kids and young people and people my age, just anyone who's felt like othered and like they're like who they were wasn't there wasn't space for who they were, because I really do believe that there is space for everyone to be seen and celebrated for who they are.
Something that you've done that really has stuck with me because I think it's connected in many ways. You grew up in a I believe both of your parents were journalists or your mother was a journalist.
Both My parents worked in like TV and newspapers.
Yes, so you.
Grew up around the kind of craft of storytelling. And one of the things that you did in your second memoir was I consider a piece of beautiful journalism, which was to go back to Quincy, a place where you'd felt quite adrift and alone in your youth and in your kind of coming of age, and you uncovered in many ways the queer history of Quincy that, for whatever reason, when you were there and would have benefited from it, it was still quite hidden and covered, so you weren't
able to kind of, you know, grab hold of it, but you almost excavated it, you know, like with one of those little archaeology so that it could be recovered and be available to other queer kids and young people or just I suppose any people in Quincy who want to avail themselves of that history and that space. That must have been an incredible experience for you.
It was so fun. There was always this bar that I walked by and saw because it was like kind of like in our downtown, which is really little, and it had like a rainbow. So I always knew that was like the gay bar, but I didn't really know who owned it or like what the story on that was.
And so getting to research the owner and then I found other queer people in Quincy and their stories, and it ultimately in the eighties had been a play the late eighties and early nineties became like an HIV testing They turned one of the dressing rooms that the queens would get ready and to perform into like an HIV testing center because they needed space. And it just was
such an incredible story. And actually the former mayor of the city that I interviewed, whose wife was the nurse that was, you know, really at the time, so incredibly brave and courageous for doing the work that she did in Quincy because there was so much anti HIV stigma in fear. He was a former mayor Quincy, he just passed away. My mom literally just told me that when she was here visiting. But what an incredible man. And
I think that it was so cathartic. It also inspired me to write my last book, which was called Let Them Stare, which is about this like young gender non conforming kid who just can't wait to get out of their hometown, and then all their plans change and they end up getting stuck in their hometown and they impulse by this fierce vintage bag with the last of their money, which is such a me thing to do, and it's priceless, honey. It's basically like a burken of my fantasy world, but
it's like even more expensive. It's like on antiqu roachow could get Sully like a million dollars, but it's haunted by a drag queen from the fifties, and then like intergenerational ghosty best friendship ensues and so literally going back and doing that those interviews in that research inspired me to ultimately write my first fiction novel, which was so fun.
One of the things I've heard you say a lot across all of the different platforms in which you kind of share yourself with us, is especially when you're reminiscing on times that were more challenging whilst you were also in the public eye, Like once you'd kind of become a public figure, as you talk about sometimes really heavy, big intense things happening in your actual life, and then you refer to it as flipping a switch into that kind of happy smiley.
I'm here to make you laugh.
Performative, but I don't mean that in a disingenuous way. But entertaining us. Was that something that started when you were quite young, perhaps even as a way to cope with some of that external shame that was coming your way.
Absolutely, and I think not only even just like external shame that was coming my way, but just enter like familial conflict and just really any conflict. Like I would just I wanted to make people laugh, and so if I saw people having a hard time, I was just like, oh my, I got this. I'll make everybody laugh.
As we've established with the hot and healed idea, you've always been hot, You'll always be hot with the healed side of things. I wonder if that flipping the switch to be happy, smiley Jonathan for the rest of us is something you do less or maybe with more awareness now or do you feel do you feel less like that's something you owe your audience if it's not really where you are.
It's there's a I will tell you that in this in this bit, I'm I'm doing this bit on healing from people pleasing and so that is like one thing that I think is really funny. I think it's something that so many people struggle with, and it's it's like an ongoing process because the truth is is that a part of me is happy, smiley Jonathan all the time. Like that part is truthfully like always in there, even
when things are really bad and awful. And I've had some of like this the worst saddest things happen, and I can usually access this part that's like really really joyful, not the whole time, but I have like a connection to that me at all times. So it's like when I need to be that person, I'm not even it's
it's not like a disingenuous thing. And my husband and I've explored how like in public, if one of those really bad things have happened and then someone's like really excited to meet me, like just I'm in like in an airport or getting in like a car somewhere and someone's like, oh my god. There's like I can count on one hand I think how many times I've said like, oh my god, I'm so sorry, like XYZ just happened. I just amount up to it. I will feel bad
about it for like three days like afterwards. It's like it truthfully is easier for me to like just take the selfie, and I actually and I really do like to make people feel good. So it's like I think now I do think on my social media, especially like having been in Texas for five years, I can see externally how I show up different now than than what
I did. I think the longer that I've you know, been in this platform and been in this position, I just be like I'm more aware of like the forces at play, and so those have been it's been harder for me to like access that joy sometimes on social because I'm afraid of like being judged. And I think only in the last like maybe a year of just having been like through the fire, so many times, I'm like, no, I'm going to access joy and I'm going to do it in public, because that's what we're here to do.
And my whole mission when I first got into entertainment, like it's always been spread self acceptance by modeling joy and curiosity. That is what I'm here to do. And so that's what I want to keep doing because I really do think that's my mission and teach you how to like do your hair.
Well, is that a dig at my hair? Because I've been so nervous about my hair this whole conversation.
Naima, that is like the most craziest thing you said this whole interview. Your hair looks amazing. I mean like to our listener, you know, like not you your hair looks amazing. That was like not a dig on your hair at all.
You'd appreciate this, Jonathan, that this is the white lotus cunty little bobs.
I love your clb I love and I love your side part. I love the side talk. And that was like please, that was like so not to read on your hair, but no, so yeah, So I feel like I can see like how it's affected me, and I have so much, like I have so much compassion for myself because I just know how hard everything has been, but not everybody knows how hard it's been. And it's hard to figure out how to thread that needle of like how much do you want to tell and how
much do you not talk about? And so that's like a weird needle to thread because I think part of my neurodivergence just wants to tell everybody everything, and that's like not good some times sometimes you have to filter.
I think this is something that we your loving audience. You know, you're loving public has observed in you, like even in queer eye, you know which, we'll get to. Your kind of role within the Fab five was a lot of the emotional labor. It doesn't seem from the outside that you know how to bring ten percent of yourself to another person when they're really wanting and needing to connect with you. Somehow you manage to center yourself and bring one hundred percent of you. But that can
be exhausting, that can be that's very big work. How do you replenish or reset or recalibrate after you've had to or decided to share so much of yourself emotionally and give so much of yourself emotionally.
Well. I think a part of it was, like I when we went to Texas in season six, I just stayed there, like I was so overwhelmed with fame and with like the onslaught of attention, like from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty that when we went to Austin to shoot and then the world stopped, I was just like, oh my god, no one, I'm just kind of here
in the woods in the middle of nowhere. And that felt really comforting and I just in the last couple of years have been like, oh wow, this level of travel of living between like Texas and going so many places for stand up and going so many places for jab and hair when so much of my work is like no longer at home like it was when I
decided to move there. So long answer, what I do to replenish is I had a lot of alone time, and I need a lot of alone time with like my pets and like my husband and myself to like just chill and kind of come back to myself. So that's kind of what I did. And now I think I've found a good balance of figuring out my work life balance so that like I can give everything I need to give when I'm working, and I still have enough time to be with myself and my family and
my friends. And so I feel like I've gotten to like a much better place of balance. But it was such a disorienting experience be like, I mean, I just was I mean, I was like a hairdresser doing like a web series and then all of a sudden, like my life changed so fast and so hard and so getting it used to that and then yeah, it's just
it was, it just was so much. And so that's kind of what I mean when I say, like, I just have so much compassion for myself because it's been so like ten years ago, me would just be like, dang, girl. That is when you said you wanted to like become famous like after our Gay of Thrones, you really, you really that was so much harder that I thought it was going to be.
After the break, Jonathan opens up about the tumultuous years during and after college when he found himself caught in cycles of drug use and sex addiction.
Stay with us.
You were the first male cheerleader in your high school who then got a scholarship, a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Arizona, where you began your studies in political science. You must have this interest in the way that our political systems work and the way that our cultural systems work that goes much farther back. Why tell me a little bit about that interest.
I think that really comes back to, like growing up, my mom sold advertising in our local newspaper, so like she would bring me to work after school, and I would like run around to like the newsroom, and I would run around to like the reporters and I'd be like, what, like this is like pre computer. So it was like they'd take like rubber cement and like razor things to like cut things out and like glue it like you know, on the pages to take to the press. It was
like amazing. And so I just was really curious and interested in the news and like the process of the news from a really early age, and so much so that in the Bill Clinton sex scandal of ninety eight, I wrote a paper that was not even like a school assignment, like we had these like we had this assignment where we had to get these like blank books and write like your life story basically, and there was like prompts, you know, like everyone made it and it
was like for your parents. And I was like, Mom, we have to find where those books came from. I'm going to write a full detailed report on the Bill Clinton sex scandal. I pulled my entire class. I did like a whole survey of my class. I wrote this whole thing like and I was a very moral, god fearing, Jesus loving nine year old. I was very like or eleven, No, I think I was eleven. I was very disappointed in Bill Clinton's actions and behaviors, and I just I was
a Ken Star apologist. I hate to say it, and so and I wrote this whole report and then when I wrote Over the Top, I was like, And back then when I wrote, I was like, I'm going to get this published. I just know someone's going to want to publish my like two hundred word with my survey from my sixth grade class, Like I just this is going to be like what breaks my career. And then when we sent it to someone and they never said anything back, I was like, oh my god, my career
is over. I'm so sad. And then it was just very fun to get to like put that report that I commissioned for myself in over the Top, So if you get Over the Top, it's literally in there, like I put it in there as like an aside. It's like a palate cleanser, because there was a really sad chapter and then I needed something like funny and light, so I put that in there, which it just makes me laugh so hard every time I read it. It's so funny.
I love that.
And what I love is that you didn't stick with political science as a major. The world had other plans for you. You had to kind of go through a big, kind of crucible of becoming. When you got to college, things did go a little bit pear shaped for you. That's when your sex addiction, your drug addiction, some of those impulsive, addictive behaviors really emerged. How do you think about that time now? How do you share the story of that time today?
You know, I don't. It's really one thing that I
feel like I could do better on. And I found that after I wrote Over the Top, I was really strong and brave in writing it, and it took so much for me to write it, and then once it came out and once I did the press for it, I was like, oh my god, that felt like putting my soul in a blender and then like eating it every day, And like soul flavored gushers are just not what I want to eat, Like I want to eat like not that every day, and so like regular gushers,
which I'm really going through a phase with right now, I'm really into gushers right now. But I've done so much work in therapy and with my therapist in EMDR to be able to talk about a situation without becoming
the situation. And I think that one thing that I want to do better on is really raising more awareness around the implication of this is like really political, but raising more awareness around the implications of like defunding Planned Parenthood in the United States and what that does to sexual health and what that does to people's ability to get testing and treatment for sexual health, and just this like HIV and STIs do not care if you are
a Evangelical Christian because Evangelical Christians are, as we all know, are doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. And so I just think I really want to make sure that other people are not because of that misinformation and homophobia and transphobia and lack of care for queer people.
I really do believe in the eighties, if they had taken HIV seriously, like when they first found it, like I don't even know if I would have ended up getting it or if the ripples are so big and so huge in history because the most powerful nation in the world at the time and still the United States, like the President of the United States at the time, Ronald Riggan, didn't say the word HIV until eighty seven, after like thousands and thousands and thousands of people had
died and I just think that's one thing that people really don't like understand, is like the level of like persecution and injustice that like queer people went through is a result of the HIV crisis. It's it's so so pervasive, and so I wish that I could, I want to do a better job about making sure that like young people know that because like we don't have like history or sexual health is really not taught to us, even
in like high school. So it's like a lot of people are like leaving school like not truly not understanding
the roots of their of their community. And that I think is really important in tur because they mean, these these young people I sound so old, but like young you know, they're voting, and they're voting for people that you know, actively or dismantling the very safety net that allows for people to make sure that they don't contract HIV and that they and if they do contract an STI, they will have a place to get treatment for it.
And and I think that's one thing that I wish because like I didn't know that when I was that age, and I always joke that, like when journalists asked me, like what would you tell your younger self I'm always like, don't do math, So I feel like between that, so it's like that and then making sure that people really understand what's important, and I really worry that people don't understand like what's important at the right time.
I think that the way that you've chosen to share your story so unvarnished, even when many people would be tempted to paint maybe just one code of varnish on you've always chosen radical honesty. I think, particularly because of everything that you've just expressed so beautifully and eloquently, which is that you don't want this to be about your story. You want there to be benefit and growth and evolution
that comes from your experience. And it's interesting because I even hesitated in thinking about talking to you about, you know, your your time and experience with addiction, because I'm really resistant to the idea that it has to be such a core part of your identity, especially when there has been so much time and you've had so many so much more life and so many more things to talk
about since that time in your life. But I think what I come back to and why it was important to me to talk to you about it today, is because you also write about how contracting HIV in many ways saved your life, And there's that paradox, isn't it for people who might not know that part of your story? How did contracting HIV save your life?
Because it was the when I contracted HIV, I was really a terrible relationship with math, and I was just relapsing on math and using math. And for a lot of people that have meth addiction are engaged in that kind of like chem sex queer like culture. It is so pervac and it is just everywhere you look. And so I think that contracting HIV saved me because that was the wake up call that got me to get
away from meth. And I think that if I hadn't gotten AHIV, I would have just kept relapsing and at one point one of those would have killed me, Like I would have overdosed at some point. I mean, I was like I was doing it all in all the ways. And it's it's interesting because when I talk about it, I feel this need to be like I wasn't like doing it every day, and I wasn't, but there was like a good bit there where like I just couldn't get like because it's like once you dip your toe in.
It's really they're not kidding when they say if you do it once, like you will be addicted. Like I literally did it once and then it took me like a few years to get to a place where like I could like where I could never do it again. And I mean I also quit smoking cigarettes. I think
that meth was harder, and yeah, it really is. I learned more about it later and rehab, and it's like it's like why we need more compassion for drug addicts because if you, like hug, I'm gonna mess up these like levels I'm gonna say like millimeters, but it's not millimeters. It's like, however you break like measure like the endorphins in your brain and like the chemicals in your brain. But it's like if you hug someone, it's like you
get like fifty of them. If you eat, like you're like this comfort food, like your favorite thing from like your mom, you know, like this is your favorite thing from you're little. It's like two hundred. Sex is like five hundred, cocaine is like seven hundred and fifty, and meth is like two thousand, five hundred. So it's like from the time that someone does it once, it's like your brain goes so high, it floods it with so much good feelings that it's like it'll make it want
to go there again. And so that's like why kids just do not do math. It's so not worth it. It's like and either my rule of thumb is we just don't do drugs that make us go up, like it's just not worth it. Like so my grandpa used to say, nothing good happens after night, Nothing good happens after you do blow or math, but like the worst thing that will happen, Well, I don't we shouldn't talk. Australia. I love your weed loss, but I'm just saying weed is.
I think weed and like alcohol are just so much less dangerous than that than the math. But alcohol's really bad too.
Actually, it's interesting how you describe those levels of kind of like that brain stimulation, because you've also spoken about how when you were really living in that place of addiction and not just you know, drugs and sex, but you write about this with your impulse shopping and so many of those kind of other impulsive behaviors, and you described it at one point as kind of trying to grab hold of the tail of the comet, which I just loved that visual and that you knew you were
going to get this big dopamine hit, but that you also knew that it wouldn't last. And I'm curious, now, hot and healed, what's your dopamine supply that feels safer, steady year, less costly to yourself in that kind of psycho spiritual way, where do you get that hit?
It's totally my My group fitness is really like such a thing. So I had been because like I think the thing that kind of stepped in for like drugs and sex, especially once I got queer, I was like it was spending like because I was like, oh my god, I can like buy things I've never had before. And I really there was this perfect storm of like COVID and isolating and moving to Texas and then finding out the Equinox like had a board member that was supporting
the Trump campaigns. Then I stopped going there in like twenty nineteen, had never been back since. So there's like this perfect convergence of like me just not doing any group fitness and for really like all my life, group fitness has been like a part of something that I did even when I didn't know I was doing it, Like cheer was group fitness, Gymnastics was group fitness, like I did tennis, I did swimming, like I just had always had like a group kind of working out activity.
And once I wasn't doing yoga, and once I wasn't because I had this whole like yoga thing post college, like into like when queer I happened, and I just wasn't doing anything in group fitness anymore. And I and I think, I thought, like I don't have time, I'm like building a business, I'm married. I just had like it just became. And I also didn't want to get COVID, But then I did get COVID like eighteen thousand times, and then I was like still fine, And so then
I started my GLP one journey. And and to be honest, I do think that GLP ones I do find that they have made me less impulsive, not only with food but like other things too, Like I do think that like they will probably find that at some point because like even with spending, which is like still my kind of like kryptonite, like it has made me able to like sit with impulses for like much longer to the
point where I'm like, Oh, I don't need that. I don't want that, And that's really weird because I'm like, who, what was that voice? I've never had that before. But my group fitness is just oh, let me finish that story. My ADHD is so intense today. So when I did might start my GLP one journey, and after like a couple months, I was like just like walking in the gym and like doing things in the gym by myself. And then I was like, Oh, why don't you go
back to pilates. You used to love plates. You haven't been there in fifteen thousand years. But I was like such a lagree girl in my twenties, and so then I like found this for former place. I went there, and when I came home and I got in the shower and like the water like hit my back. I cried harder than I have like ever cried in my
literal whole life. And I was like, you, silly be you forgot this part of yourself that was like this really important part of yourself of like regulating your neurodivergence and regulating like how you relate to the world, and like you were getting up in mainlining reading just the worst things about yourself on Twitter for four years, like why are you not getting up and moving your body?
You silly cow? And so then I was like, oh, yeah, group fitness, like this is like when my brain feels normal and normally the voice in my head is nice for myself. But it was just like, oh, duh, yeah that I just cut this part off of myself like a dead foot in COVID and just never looked back. And that was just I was like, oh wow, that was like a huge part of myself to cut off.
And I've just i think since that day and like January of last year, I think I've like not gone to a group fitness class like ten times or something like I'll take a Saturday off every once in a while. But I just feel so good. It like regulates me so much to be in a group of people that just being treated the same as everyone else and doing
the same thing as everyone else. It is just so regulating to my nervous system and it has really really helped me in such a profound way that I'm like kind of surprised still, like how much it's helped me feel better.
Coming up next Jonathan talks about the conversation with a friend that helped them understand and embrace their non binary identity back in a tick. You've been very openly honest about coming out as a non binary person and spoken so beautifully about not fitting into easy categories. Do you remember when that language became the language that made you feel at home in your body when you went right, Yes, that's what makes sense to me.
It was definitely a loak. It was definitely a loak, like finding a loak on Instagram or maybe they told me about it in person, but meeting a lookan becoming friends with the loke, I think was the first time where I was like, oh, yes, that's what this is.
So I always like take my hat off to a locause I mean they really a locus, like my good friend who's a comedian and a storyteller, and I always say they're like the thought leader of our time, and their Instagram and TikTok is amazing, and I just I
love them so much. But I think they were really the first person that where like they validated my gender expression in a way where I was like, and didn't even validate it, just showed me a possibility model that mirrored how I've already felt my whole life.
And you've talked about that, You've talked about how you know your energy is kind of all over the place, and some days you feel more masculine and some days you feel more feminine. What is kind of ultimate freedom in your gender expression feel like to you?
These days, it feels like just exactly what I'm doing. The only thing that gives me like intense gender dysphoria is ties, like ties and suits, Like I just want to rip it off my body. I'm like Carrie with insects and City with the dress, Like it really makes me so like a suit and tie. Even now just talking about it, I like like I want to run away from you just talking about it, like.
I actually can't even I'm having a hard time even visualizing you in a suit and tie.
It doesn't feel right.
Yeah, it's like I would only do it for like Halloween, if I was going to be like some person in a suit. But other than that, I feel like I really am kind of living my freedom of my gender expression. It's like, and I think one thing that like it's caught up if you didn't even ask this, but I
love it. I'm going to talk about it. I think for any queer person that's spoken out for trans inclusion in sports or trans people's access to healthcare, it's like you're painted is someone who's like trying to like prey on children or change children's like gender expression. And my whole thing around this persecution of trans people that we've seen like across the world, it's that. And it's my
same thing with reproductive rights. It's about medical privacy. Any person should be able to have like bodily autonomy on them, like over their bodies, to like make the health care decisions that they need to make, whether that relates to gender expression or it relates to like having a baby.
And I just think that for governments to be telling people that they know better of what they should do with their bodies than the person does, is the true really the most like Unamerican thing that you could do, like for the Land of the Free and the home of the brave. And we are like telling like forcing women into birth in this country and telling parents that if they have a child who has gender dysphoria, like
legitimate gender dysphoria. And I'm not saying that like every kid who has questions around gender should be getting surgery. But I'm saying that for the rare cases where some kids do have extreme gender dysphoria, it can be life saving treatment and a lot of times and most of the time it's not surgery. So there's just there's so much misinformation. But my whole thing always just comes down to,
like privacy. We should be able to have privacy around our medical decisions, and the fact that that has been taken away from twenty two million women in this country. I think, or in the United States, is like crazy that that's not what we're talking about like all the time.
I think it's so interesting, and again this is something to have heard you speak about extensively, but broadly speaking, it does feel like, even if you think about the kind of height of queer eye, that it feels like as a culture, we were kind of we were progressing, we were evolving, we were normalizing to the point of not having to be constantly even unpacking it the diversity of gender expression in humanity. Does it feel like we are backsliding?
To you, what is it like for you.
In America in this political moment. What's happening for you and your community.
Yeah, it's awful. I mean, we've had so the Supreme Court just held that states' rights are supreme in terms of like a state can say that you cannot have gender refirming care up to the age of eighteen. Some have proposed laws that will go up to twenty six, but the Supreme Court has I forget the name of the case, but it has it sided with the state and with Tennessee. So Tennessee's law that says that you cannot get gender firming care until you're eighteen years old stands.
They're saying it's constitutional, and so they have essentially said that it's parental rights for evangelicals and for Christians, but not parents' rights for the parents trans of trans young people. And the fact is is that you know, miners get elective surgery all the time, like miners get nose jobs. Miners get all sorts of augmentations, placid surgeries, tweaks, they get shoulder surgeries, they get knee surgeries like high school athletes.
I mean, young people do get surgery. That is a fact. And so I think the lawyer that argued this case, who's a friend of mine, who I think is so incredible, his name is Chase Strangio, and he was the first openly trans lawyer to argue a case at the Supreme Court.
He's just saying, like, why is it that cys gender young people are able to get these surgeries, Like, so you know, a young sixteen year old boy who has guino clemastia can go get guino clemastia removed, which is gender affirming surgery, But a sixteen year old trans girl can't get a breast augmentation. But we have sixteen year old women getting breast augmentations with parental consent, So why
can't trans people do that? So that's that's what the case is there, and whether or not someone's going to have surgical or regret. I just don't think is society's place to enforce that. It's an individual's freedom to do with their body what they want, and I think we should all have that freedom. And to be denied the freedom to do with your body as long as you're not hurting someone else, I think is really like just so scary, especially when it comes to reproductive healthcare.
When it comes to kind of your political voice and staying in the political fray. You've said that you want to be so compassionate that you can talk to a rabid Republican Q and honor and make them change their mind. I want to know whether you've actually ever accomplished that and if you still feel that way.
I do feel like that, but actually I did do it. I mean that nice man in Queer I season nine that I said like the crop failure thing too. I always he had what was his name? He had such a funny like dealer name that I forget. Anyway, he was like a very like very ardent Trump's I wasn't able to change his mind. I only had like a few hours with him, but I would have needed like three months at least. But I think my compassion is
is it's definitely a one. I think I've maybe changed some mag of people's minds online maybe, But I do have the compassion and I do still feel like that because I do think that people that are supporting and are actively supporting Trump's agenda now, I do think that they've been exposed to really intense misinformation around undocumented immigrants, around trans people, around around women, around abortion, around so
many things. You know, the fact that we have so many people that think that it's snap benefits that are draining the economy, and not the fact that we've like given eleven billion dollars of like tax subsidies to Elon Musk. It's like, it's definitely the billionaires. It's definitely not people on snap benefits.
And as we've kind of discussed, when you choose to be a public person and choose to try to use that public platform to be a force for good, that's big work. It can be exhausting and taxing work. And I can only imagine that one of the ways beyond group fitness, that you've also really refill that cup and kind of keep your yourself safe and keep that battery charged is with your beautiful husband, Mark, who I got to meet for like twenty seconds when he was setting
up your microphone. There you got pandemic married. You've been married for five years now. Congratulations, Thank you. How did you know Mark is the one?
I just I don't know. I just did and it felt like it was the right time, and so we did and it was. I'm just so proud of our relationship because neither of us have ever been in a relationship this long, and we've navigated so much like difficult stuff, and we've just it's everything's only ever brought us closer. So I'm really just so proud of us.
And your animal family has been a really big part of your life. Yourself is an animal parent, has always been a really big part of who you are. I can relate to that a lot. I've got my little dog next to me right here, and so who are your animal family at the moment?
We have an age order. We have Larry, Eliza, Mean, Nellie, Matilda, Genevieve, Elton, Baggy, Rose, George.
And these are dogs, cats and chickens.
No, those are all just the cats and dogs are dogs. Yeah, we do still have chickens. A few of them have like passed away, and those were really like more of like Marx Department than my department. So I don't know who's like currently still like laying the eggs back there.
Okay, so it's good I didn't quiz you on the name and age of all of your chickens.
Yeah I would have. Yeah, I'm not that's more Mars department. I don't. I get scared to go down there, but I do eat the eggs.
Yes, yeah, no, fair enough.
You know, with how you are and how many different projects you have going on at any given time. I'm curious to know what home mode really feels like when it's you and Mark and your fifty eleven pets. What's the rhythm of your day, what's the rhythm of your life?
Well, we love Fortnite. We're like big gamers, so we My favorite thing would be wake up, go to Pilate's, come home, take the dogs to the dog park, like, make breakfast, like on a day off, make breakfast, go upstairs, play Fortnite for like three hours, come downstairs, put stuff away, then get ready, then go meet our friends to do something cute, like at brunch or something, or like a
like a like a I do. I just love an early dinner on a day off so that I can come back home and play Fortnite from like six to like ten, and then I'll watch like realistically, like four minutes of bake Off before I fall asleep at like ten oh.
Four, Like a perfect day.
I also never in a million years would have guessed that you were a Fortnite gamer.
And I love this.
Oh, I love Fornite. I have a whole set, I have a whole bit and hot and healed about gaming and about the ways in which I'm gaming has allowed me to heal and find and connect more healthily to some of my anger.
Which is a perfect segue because in these remaining minutes that I have with you, and you've been so generous with your time, Jonathan, Hot and healed, Hot and healed, baby, coming down under. You'll be here next year. What can we expect from this show? Where did this work and this creation come from in you? What are you bringing to the stage? Why do we all need to be there?
So in twenty twenty four, I was used in a pro Trump campaign ad that they spent like two hundred and twenty million dollars on that has this clip of me meeting Kamala Harris and the voiceover says She's for they them, and Trump's for you. And so that was a very I just could in twenty twenty four, I just could not catch a break. Okay, the only break that I caught was that we won gold back in the women's team gymnastics. But other than that, like, it
was just a rough year. And so really all of this set is born out of the election fallout what I learned in twenty twenty four, and it's about healing through that and kind of what I think that we need to do as a society to heal together. And then it's also been and it's also about my healing journey, Like I looked totally different than I did when I first started this tour and that it was a total accident.
And it was also because I was healing from impulse spending because I couldn't keep impulse spending bigger clothes, so I had to figure out to fit in my old clothes, which is like why I really got on GLP ones. So I'm just kind of going over all of that and all of the election fallout and really what I think we need to do to heal pasts, Like really what this this set is like dealing with. It's like
it's giving a lot of gender. I'm also getting into like like talking to like white people in like a new fun way and a way that I have it before, where I'm just trying to like cause I know we can be better. I know we got this. It's very cheerleader base, but it's also like just fun and I think it's it's the most like clever and I think political comedy that I've ever done, and it's the most I think really being connected to our speech is so important right now, and so healing is really in the
center of it. But I've had a really unique experience being featured on this campaign ad and having the chance to meet Vice President former Vice presid Kamala Harris last year, and so it's really kind of just breaking down what I went through in twenty twenty four and how I've healed from it, and what I think we can all do to kind of come together better. But it really is a fun show. And I would also say Australia
inspired me so much. And when I came down the last time to do Fun and Slutty that it it got a whole well or or was it Road to Beijing or was it No, it was a MAJORI living room Olympian the last time I did Australia, it was imaginary living room Olympian. And when I came to do that, I did this bit that bombed in Sydney and I said, I was like, I'm HIV positive. This was my second pandemic, and no one in this auditorium laughed, like no one laughed and because I just they didn't have permission yet
to laugh. Like I just think that I just I don't know. I don't I think my build up to the joke was like wrong, I just had not practiced it enough. So then I was like, oh, I'm sorry, I did you know what I'd stand me? OHI sage, ii'm hei CHOI V positive. This is my second pandemic. And then I literally let everyone a chant where I was like, say it wins may give me a hih And then I was like hih and I was like, give me an oi oi and I was like, give
me a may. What's this spell? And then we literally chanted HIV and then I was like, you guys, was with you? Why are we chanting HIV? So I totally
made it funny and we made it work. But I ended up taking that experience and I worked that into the show and so for the rest of my tour after that, I did a call and repete of like hate choive heighte CHOI ve like in an Australian accent, yes with the h and even so much so that in my first special that came out last year, Fun and Sluttie, I like tell that story and it's it's like, so in this set will be more polished for you guys.
So we've played our little part as Australian.
It was a big part. I love a big part, and I'm so excited to come back.
Oh, we're so excited to have you. You're such a deeply funny person. You are a great comedian, and I think it's because almost to exactly the story you just shared. You know, your comedy is rooted in compassion, it's rooted in lived experience, it's rooted in a real desire to help people move, even if it's just incremental, you know, one more inch towards loving themselves more. I think really is where you begin and where your work really begins.
So we're very excited to have you. It's remarkable to me. You know, we covered a lot of ground and a lot of quick pivots in this conversation because at only thirty eight, which is crazy, because you've.
Lived so much life.
I just find your story so full, so astonishing, and I'm so excited for the next chapters, the next books, the next poor all of it me too.
Thank you so much for your time. This has been such a joy.
Thanks for having me.
Friends.
That was Jonathan van Ness, and I'm so grateful for how open and generous they were in this conversation. Jonathan has lived through things that would have broken many people, and yet they've found a way to turn their pain into purpose, humor, joy and connection. Speaking with them as a reminder that recovery isn't linear, identity isn't fixed, and healing can be as complex.
As it is beautiful.
And if you want to experience Jonathan in person, and why wouldn't you? Their Hot and Healed tour kicks off in Brisbane on the twenty fifth of February and then travels all around Australia. For tickets and all the details,
check the show notes. The executive producer of No Filter is myself Naima Brown, The senior producers pre player audio editing by Tina Matalov with video editing by Josh green I guest hosted today's episode, but you'll be excited to know that Kate Lankerbrook will be back next Monday with an all new episode of No Filter.
Mamma Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast is recorded on