Jonathan Van Ness looks back on Gay of Thrones

There were a lot of Game of Thrones recap shows on during the show’s heyday, but for my money, none were more essential than Gay of Thrones. Hairdresser Jonathan Van Ness would style his guests’ hair while talking through the latest episode of the show. Between the banter, the insight, and Van Ness’ hilarious names for the characters, Gay of Thrones was always essential viewing.

While I’ll always remember Van Ness as the host of Gay of Thrones, he’s better known now as a cast member on Netflix’s very successful revival of Queer Eye. Hard as it is to believe, it all started with Funny or Die producer Erin Gibson, a client at the salon where he worked, listening to him give an impromptu recap of the show and deciding to make a series out of it. “Really, it was supposed to be one episode,” Van Ness told Deadline, “and our second episode, we got Alfie Allen to sign on, and we were like, ‘Wow, maybe we have something special. Let’s just finish out this season”—and then that turned into another season.'”

"Really, Gay of Thrones [took] me from [being] a full-time hairdresser to someone who still does love to do hair—but now, I’m kind of a full-time producer/content creator/accidental Emmy nominee. When I started doing Gay of Thrones, I definitely didn’t know that I would end up fully in an entertainment career. But it’s just been the most incredible, rewarding, nerve-wracking, fun experience that I didn’t know I was going to have, learning how to create content, how to be a comedian, how to be a writer, how to be a producer in my late 20s, early 30s. It has just been an incredibly honoring and awesome and humbling experience, all of it."

It’s true: Gay of Thrones is up for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series at this year’s Emmy Awards. With the voters wanting to honor Game of Thrones for its last season, we’re hoping it’ll take home a win!

And it’d be deserved. Van Ness and his team, which grew as Gay of Thrones got bigger, would watch each new episode every Sunday night, collect their thoughts, and pitch jokes until they had a workable script. (There was more improvisation in the early seasons, but structure helps when you’re dealing with guests stars.)

Usually, the team would shoot an episode that very night, although they pushed it to Monday mornings for for the final season, when they had on heavy-hitters like Kumail Nanjiani, Anna Farish and Tiffany Haddish, some of whom couldn’t be available on Sunday nights. Clearly, Van Ness thinks it was worth it. “And Tiffany Haddish, I think I was literally speechless working with her,” Van Ness said. She’s just someone who is so incredibly, unapologetically themselves, and is so brilliant to work with. My face hurt; my occipital bone in the back of my head, I had to get it checked, honey. I was laughing so much. This season’s just been incredible.”

Funnily enough, Van Ness actually knew some of the Game of Thrones cast members before starting on Gay of Thrones — HBO hired him to do their hair ahead of their very first Comic-Con. “So, I met Emilia [Clarke] and Kit [Harington] and George [R.R. Martin] and Nikolaj [Coster-Waldau]…Since Queer Eye, I ran into Emilia Clarke last year at the Emmys, but I wasn’t going to bring up Gay of Thrones, because I didn’t want to be that person. I just took a selfie with her and was like, ‘Oh my god, I love you.’ And I saw Gwendoline Christie last year at the Emmys, which was also major.”

"I think who I talk the most to, and who I’m the closest with outside of Esmé Bianco—whose hair I did forever, and got to meet and work with through Game of Thrones, back when she played Ros—is Lena [Headey], because we DM a lot and Instagram."

And of course, as a huge fan of Game of Thrones — and of TV in general; Van Ness has some wide-ranging tastes — he has opinions about how the show ended, and about the backlash it inspired.

"I just think that it’s so hard to watch something come to an end that we all love so much. It’s hard to say goodbye, and I do think that there’s beautiful and sad aspects of the way that the story ended. It’s so heartbreaking for all of us that love Christina Aguilera [Van Ness’s Gay of Thrones nickname for Daenerys Targaryen] so much, and love Gwendoline so much, for those storylines to have Brother D [Jaime Lannister, or “Brother Daddy”]…Having Gwendoline waxing poetic about him in that history book, and for Christina to go down like that, it was just like, What? These powerful ladies…I was really happy for Sansa, and happy for Bran, and I think this is what it really comes down to. Everyone loves Game of Thrones so much, and we all were pulling for our people so much, and it’s just really tough to see it go. Obviously, we all have our opinions on it. But I still think that none of that controversy takes away from the stunning and incredible work that that crew did, and the cinematographers did, and the costume designers and the set designers and the makeup artists and the actors that brought so much life to these stories.However you feel about the last season, Game of Thrones—last season included—raised the bar of television, and storytelling, and risk-taking above anything that TV has ever seen. It elevated TV across the board, so I think you’ve got to give that credit where it’s due, honey. It was such an incredible story to tell on TV, and I think they did such a great job."

I must be watching an episode of Queer Eye because I’m tearing up a little.

Anyway, Van Ness has a lot on his plate, but clearly he has a gift for short form comedy. Is there any chance he could apply the Gay of Thrones format to another show?

"It also seems that [what] made Gay of Thrones so special was that we had such a rich story to pull from, to make so many of those hilarious jokes, and create that Gay of Thrones world within Game of Thrones, like in a salon. So, I don’t know what story is being told in TV right now that’s that rich and has that many rich storylines. We’ll see what the prequel does, though. I can’t wait to see the prequel."

So say we all.

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