Звезда «Queer Eye» Джонатан Ван Несс запускает тур «Hot and Healed» в Бинг-центр

‘Queer Eye’ star Jonathan Van Ness brings ‘Hot and Healed’ tour to the Bing Jonathan Van Ness is known for hair – their own, the magic they work on others, their haircare line. You get the point. Before they became a well-known public figure, thanks to their time as one of the Fab Five on the reboot of “Queer Eye,” Van Ness was a hairstylist in Los Angeles. While styling friend Erin Gibson’s hair, Van Ness would recap episodes of “Game of Thrones” for Gibson, who worked for comedy website Funny or Die. She told Van Ness, “This is a webseries. We have to do this for Funny or Die.” That conversation would turn into “Gay of Thrones,” which found Van Ness recapping episodes of “Game of Thrones” as only they could: “They were serving straight up Winterfell realness last night, OK?” Though they hadn’t acted before, Van Ness said they were instantly on board with the idea of creating a webseries. “She totally opened my eyes to a whole world that I never would have known,” they said. “It was an immediate ‘Yes.’ I was so excited, but I didn’t realize how much I was going to get to learn and how much really goes into writing comedy and performing comedy and being in a writer’s room.” “Gay of Thrones” quickly grew in popularity, with celebrities like Maria Bamford, Amanda Seales, Anna Faris, Kumail Nanjiani and Tiffany Haddish appearing in the stylist’s chair throughout the show’s run. The show was nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series in 2016, 2018 and 2019. In the second season, comedian Margaret Cho sent Van Ness a message asking if she could be the one in the chair, which Van Ness, a big fan of Cho, said almost made them crash their car. During filming, Cho told Van Ness “You are meant to be a standup comedian” but they insisted they were meant to be her hair dresser. Over the next year or two, as Van Ness styled Cho’s hair, she invited Van Ness to the Improv and encouraged them to try standup. Van Ness wasn’t interested in regularly going to open mics late at night after a full day of doing hair, but they did accept invitations from comedian and producer friends to take the stage every now and then. “I’d probably done that half a dozen times, then once ‘Queer Eye’ started, that really kicked the door down for me to be able to book the Improv or book Caroline’s Comedy Club by myself,” they said. “I started doing a lot more stand up. Now I’ve been a touring comedian for eight years, at least 40, 50 shows a year.” Van Ness will perform in Spokane for the first time on their “Hot and Healed” tour, coming to the Bing Crosby Theater on Saturday. Though they are now at home on stage, it took awhile for Van Ness to get to that point. In the beginning, they would get overwhelmed thinking about how they would fill 10 or 15 minutes of stage time. Van Ness’ early sets were often recaps similar to “Gay of Thrones” about things they were passionate and educated about, including figure skating and gymnastics. ” ‘Are you familiar with the 1994 Games?’ or ‘Are you familiar with the 2018 women’s long skate?’ ” Van Ness would ask audiences before launching into analysis. As Van Ness continued to perform, they began to understand their voice while also learning how to meld storytelling with a setup and punchline. Their comedy now includes politics, gender expression (Van Ness is nonbinary) and whatever else Van Ness wants to talk about. “One part of my comedy is that I do want people to feel more joyful and lighter and in a better relationship with themselves and the world around them, which is a big sentence to say of comedy, but I think some comedians use comedy as a cudgel to make fun of other people and not only do they use comedy to be a cudgel on other people, but they use it to validate people’s phobias and hatred and assumptions of certain people,” they said. “I really like my comedy to allow people to feel more wonder and more curiosity and more joy when they think about other people, even Republicans. I joke a lot about Republicans, but I try really hard that that through line is compassion because that’s where the good healing is.” Van Ness has been touring “Hot and Healed” since January 2025, tweaking the order of jokes and replacing older bits with new material as they go. After releasing their first special, “Fun and Slutty,” on Veeps in 2024, they immediately knew they wanted to write another one. “Much like Suni Lee said that she knew when she fell off the beam in Paris that she wanted to make her comeback in LA 2028, I didn’t feel like my special fell on the beam, but I will never forget at the premiere watching everyone watch that special for the first time and feeling like ‘Oh my God, I want to do this again,’” they said. Along with “Hot and Healed” and their standup work, Van Ness is the host of the podcast “Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness,” an author, a television personality and the founder of the haircare line JVN Hair. They’d like to try acting in a scripted series or film after appearing as a scripted version of themself in two episodes of comedian Michelle Buteau’s “Survival of the Thickest” and are currently writing a scripted project of their own. Each of these mediums sustains Van Ness in a different way, and, especially now that they’ve got more time to themselves following the ending of “Queer Eye” earlier this year, Van Ness is able to divide their attention as needed. If they are working on a new product for JVN Hair, for instance, that takes precedence. If they’re on the road touring or prepping for a new podcast episode, their attention goes there. Over time, Van Ness has come to realize that they like to write in the morning when it’s quiet, work on JVN Hair projects in the middle of the day, then come back to their writing in the evening. They may seem like they’ve got it all together, but Van Ness makes it clear there are still days when they feel stressed and wish for more work-life balance. They’ve gotten better at recognizing when they need a break and give themself grace when it’s time to slow down. Hot and healed, indeed. “It’s not like I’m perfect and have it all figured out …” they said. “My hair is pretty good though. My hair is pretty, pretty close.”