Queer Eye’s Jeremiah Brent on life with husband and ‘best friend’ Nate Berkus

It’s probably fair to say that interior designer Jeremiah Brent is in the busiest phase of his life. In early 2024, he joined the Spice Girls of queer TV, Queer Eye‘s Fab Five, as Interiors Spice. Or rather, the Netflix hit’s resident home expert. 

Though he’s been a TV fixture for over a decade – first in The Rachel Zoe Project, then alongside his furniture designer husband Nate Berkus in Nate & Jeremiah by Design, then Netflix’s short-lived wedding show Say I Do – Queer Eye is a different beast.

The reality series, which Brent promises is “real” and not “wildly produced”, follows Jonathan Van Ness (hair and beauty guru), Antoni Porowski (food connoisseur), Karamo Brown (culture and lifestyle aficionado) and Tan France (style icon) as the Fab Five, as they execute makeovers for average American citizens. Brent replaced interiors expert Bobby Berk for season nine onwards, a move he has previously said “terrified” him.

It’s a huge commitment; there have been nine seasons since 2018, and a tenth will film soon. Does the man who works to make homes worth living in ever get to spend much time on his own? “No. I was just complaining this morning about it,” he laughs over audio call. “It’s increasingly more difficult, but I’m working on it.”

He is at home right now in New York City, but less than 24 hours prior he was in London. “The weather there for the last week was so beautiful. It was really hard to leave,” he says, and he means it. Because despite being away from his home, Berkus whom he married in 2014, and their two children Poppy and Oskar, 10 and seven, Brent loves to work.

“I’m really fortunate and I love what I do, so the busyness is fun because it’s my passion but it does make those moments at home even more important; the weekends are super cherished times,” he shares. “It’s like, breakfast and then pyjamas in bed watching cartoons and the little things with the kids that are so restorative and so important. Like most people, home is where you go to refuel and to fill that cup back up again.”

During the recent Queer Eye season, viewers saw Brent explaining to the show’s Heroes – those receiving a makeover – that serenity in their home can be achieved through small changes rather than big purchases. Brent and Berkus take on this approach in their own living space too; it’s how they keep home happy.

“I’m super ceremonial and ritualistic with the way I live, more so than I think I even realised, and now that I’m 90 year-old I’m basically figuring it all out,” he jokes.

There’s always music playing in the Brent-Berkus pad, playlists that change and rotate to suit the time of day. He wakes up first, throws open all the windows and lights the house with candles. He uses STEM insect repellent products to ensure his house is pest-free. “All those little things give a house a heartbeat. For me, it’s just really important.”

Between 2017 and 2023, Brent and Berkus’s home life merged into their work life. Nate & Jeremiah by Design ran on TLC for three seasons between 2017 and 2019, tracing their married life and parenthood, while they also attempted to salvage other people’s home renovations gone awry. Follow up series arrived – Nate and Jeremiah: Save My House (2020 to 2021) and The Nate and Jeremiah Home Project (2021 to 2023) – but the pair currently aren’t working together on a TV project. 

Yet with Trump’s America rapidly descending into an increasingly hostile environment for queer folk, Brent would very much be up for bringing the power couple back to TV.

“I never say no to anything,” he says. “The backbone of what [Nate & Jeremiah by Design] was about was visibility. It was really important for us to show a queer family like ours to a large part of the country and the globe that hadn’t really experienced it.”

Brent, 40, was closeted for 20 years, and says today that he was desperately unaware that queer folk could ever start a family. With anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment hotting up, there will likely be young queer folk in middle American equally unaware that they have a future.

“The world’s changed in some really great ways, and it’s still changing in some really difficult ways. I’m committed to doing things that are queer forward and queer positive, giving people access and understanding, advocating for the marginalised and making sure that people understand that we as a community aren’t going anywhere,” he urges. “We deserve just as much love as everybody else.”

If such project comes his way and it’s with Berkus, then he’s down. “He and I are aligned on that. That’s one of the reasons that doing Queer Eye has been so profoundly special for me, is to be able to tap into the community and to get to have the conversations that I’ve always wanted to have and to be able to fight and advocate for kindness and empathy and awareness.”

It’s helpful, of course, that the pair have such a sweet, unbreakable bond. “I love working with Nate. Obviously he’s my husband, but he’s also one of my best friends. We have a good time together, absolutely.”

Queer Eye is streaming on Netflix. STEM’s bug repellents can be purchased here.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.