Your living space is the physical embodiment of all you hold dear — where you get intimate and where your kids throw their toys around. Bobby Berk, the decorator on Netflix's Queer Eye reboot, totally gets that, and works overtime on the set of Queer Eye to make sure that the heroes of the show have a perfect new place to call home. He doesn't just re-do someone's house, he re-does their life. When we watched the show, we wondered how Berk could accomplish these stunning makeovers in just a week, and now we know: A lot of overtime work.
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"While my Fab brothers often had three to four days off a week, some weeks, depending on what we were building, I worked seven days a week. I do have to do some pre-design work on these," he tells Architectural Digest.
Berk explains that his pre-design work typically includes researching on the hero's family, job, and lifestyle. In advance of filming, he also needs to order furniture and coordinate with contractors to ensure the job gets done. And before the actual redecoration can take place, his crew spends time cleaning out the houses. During one taping, Berk explains that the crew discovered a termite infestation, and needed to knock out several walls. If that sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is.
Luckily, Berk heaps praise on his art department. "My art director had worked on Extreme Home Makeover," he explains. "The contractor that we used in Atlanta had worked on a lot of shows, so she understood time frames. We would have sometimes 20, 30 people in a little bitty house, getting that together." With local labourers, Berk's team was able to accomplish the impossible: serious home refreshes in just one week.
It's not just the heroes that are blown away by Berk's transformations, the viewers of the show are are also emotionally invested. "I'm just getting message after message after message of a positive impact that the show is having. It's really, really emotionally overwhelming. But in a good way." We agree — Queer Eye has set the bar for reality TV tears, and we hope it keeps coming.