Yahoo Lifestyle Writing His Memoir Left Jonathan Van Ness in a 'Blistering Depression,' Stand-Up Comedy Brought His Joy Back (Exclusive)
In September 2019, nearly two years after bursting into viewer's hearts on Queer Eye, Jonathan Van Ness released his memoir. While fans of the feel-good Netflix life-improvement show primarily knew Van Ness as the chatty and flamboyant hairdresser in charge of grooming each episode's subject, Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love revealed a more somber past. While Van Ness imbued his "laugh-and-cry-out-loud" memoir with his signature charm, optimism and humor, he also wrote about his past drug addition, learning he was HIV positive and facing childhood sexual abuse.
In the sea of bland celebrity memoirs, Over the Top, with its mix of humor and soul-searching, was an instant success. A New York Times Bestseller, it was named one of NPR's Favorite Books of the Year and a Goodreads Choice Award Winner. But while the book certainly earned Van Ness plenty of love, it left him feeling a bit depleted.
"I thought I was ready to write that book," Van Ness shares while chatting with Parade, "but I experienced such blistering depression after it came out. I think Brené Brown calls it a 'vulnerability hangover,' which is so real. I just felt so exposed."
"After that book tour, I understood why everyone in my life was like, 'You know, you don't have to do this if you don't want to do this,'" he continues. "After I experienced everything, I was like, 'Holy shit, I understand that.' It was really intense."
Now, nearly five years later, Van Ness is tackling one medium perhaps even scarier than memoir: stand-up comedy. On Thursday, Jan. 23, he'll release his first stand-up special, Fun and Slutty, on the on-demand streaming platform Veeps. In the hour-long set, the Queer Eye star, who identifies as non-binary but uses he/him pronouns, tackles many of his memoir's subjects through the vehicle of humor.
"Stand-up has allowed me to reclaim my joy and reclaim the joy around discussing my HIV status," Van Ness says. "I get to own my story. It doesn't have to be a sad one. I get to control my story, and I think that's really fun for people, especially for survivors of abuse and those in recovery."
Prior to the release of Fun and Slutty, Van Ness caught up with Parade from his hotel room in Toronto, where he was staying for an event in support of his haircare line, JVN Hair. "I feel like I'm gabbing with my girlfriend on Fortnite," he says while making himself a coffee in the suite's Keurig.
Related: Who Is Jonathan Van Ness Married to? All About Ceramics Designer Mark Peacock
While Van Ness is best known as a hairdresser, he's actually been performing stand-up as a side-gig for years. (The special begins by saying that the recording has been six years in the making, but also 37 years in the making.) The person who originally pushed him to perform was none other than the iconic Margaret Cho, who guested on his hit parody show Gay of Thrones in 2014.
"It was her who told me, 'You're meant to be a stand-up comedian,'" he remembers. "I was like, 'No, I'm meant to be your hairdresser. I don't know if I can really do stand-up.' She was the one who really encouraged me to get into it."
From there, Van Ness started performing at Chicago open mic nights with five-minute sets. Then came Queer Eye, a comedy agent and "JVN and Friends"-style shows. "I remember the first time I wrote a 10-minute set being like, 'Oh my god, how am I gonna do 10 minutes?'" Van Ness recalls, "Now I've done three hour-long international tours, and this is my first special. I'm just really excited to get to show people this side of myself.
Fun and Slutty, which was filmed in Austin, Texas, where Van Ness currently lives with a hoard of animals, grew out of his "You're a Hot Slut" series of social media posts and is set up like a sex-ed class with "Professor Jonathan Van Nasty" teaching audience members the importance of sex in a stigma-free environment.
"It's explaining that 'slutty' can just be about experience pleasure," he says. "It doesn't have to have this sex-negative, judgmental connotation."
In the special, Van Ness doesn't shy away from potentially uncomfortable topics like public golden showers, using Mapquest for "dick appointments," and which Republican politicians he'd like to have sex with (spoiler alert: the answer is a four-way with Mitt Romney, Josh Hawley and Dan Crenshaw).
As with any good sex-ed class, Fun and Slutty also includes some crowd participation. While it doesn't appear in the special, on tour Van Ness asks audiences, "What's the most interesting thing you've ever put inside yourself?" He tells us that the most memorable response from the whole tour came from a trans masc non-binary person in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
"When I asked that question, the spotlight just kind of settled on them and we connected eyes. Usually if people are nervous, I'm like, 'These are the funny things I've heard over the tour' to warm them up, but before I could even do that, this person was like [JVN does an Irish accent], 'A statue of the Virgin Mary!' It literally brought the house down. Like the roof vibrated. The windows were shaking. People were howling."
While this is Van Ness' first recorded special, it's actually the culmination of his third stand-up tour. He previously toured with Jonathan Van Ness: Road to Beijing and Imaginary Living Room Olympian, the latter of which involved Van Ness performing an old gymnastics routine. He's thankful his new act is less physical.
"I put so much into touring, and it really is backbreaking, bone-crushing work," he says, "But it's work that I love, and I love the art of it. I love getting into storytelling. I love getting to craft a show. I love it even more now that I don't do gymnastics in my first 10 minutes of the show, because it was really fucking hard on my 37-year old body."
Despite touring for six years, taping the special presented new levels of stress for Van Ness. "It was really nerve-racking," he says, "I think it was the most nervous I've ever been in my whole career. I didn't realize how nervous I was gonna be, but when I was backstage about to walk on, my ankles were shaking in my shoes. The liveness of it!"
They filmed the special twice in one night, but primarily used footage from the second taping. Van Ness says he wishes they'd "had two more" so he could really get into a flow, but is "thrilled" with the results. "I truly think I'm the most authentic version of who I am. I get to shine in the way that feels most like who I am doing standup," he says. "I want to do it again, but I need to write another hour."
Decked out in a mint green fringe dress (which he gives his longtime "fashion muse" and stylist Ali Brooks credit for), Van Ness also takes on Republican politicians for their discrimination of LGBTQ+ people. In the special, he pokes fun at the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene for a lack of style due to alienating all the queer hairdressers and makeup artists.
When we asked which Republican he'd most like to give a makeover to, he selected South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace, who introduced an anti-transgender bathroom resolution at the Capitol after Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, became the first transgender woman elected to Congress.
"I really would love to give Nancy Mace's soul a makeover," he says. "I'm very happy for her to keep rocking her glam, because it gives me great joy seeing her stylistic choices, because they're hilarious. You really can see that no one taught her how to do her glam, but I think her soul is what really needs the makeover."
"It is so concerning to watch the way that people cheer on her scapegoating of trans women in the name of protecting women-only spaces," he continues. "When women in the United States are bleeding out in parking lots, are facing intimate domestic partner violence at huge levels that affect them economically, emotionally, mentally, physically. I mean, women are suffering in silence all over the United States because of abortion bans. That's the threat to women."
Other ideas that the right have co-opted, according to Van Ness, are masculinity and bravery. "Mark Zuckerberg's talking about how we need to bring corporate masculinity back," he says, calling out the Facebook founder for comments he made on a Joe Rogen podcast appearance on Jan. 10. "The courage and bravery, and for lack of a better word, 'balls' that it took for me to write about my [HIV] status when I did at that point in my career? Any corporate man, I'd love to see you be that brave."
"The way that we even frame masculinity, which is like independence, courage, bravery," Van Ness continues. "Those tenants are much more aligned with a trans femme person in the United States in 2025 than with a corporate man. I just think that's really important we call out."
Days before Van Ness' special airs, Donald Trump signed an executive order stating that there are only two biological genders. It's in the face of discrimination against non-binary and transgender individuals that Van Ness is performing.
"It's why standup is so important," he says. "Because we need to be able to joke about things that would otherwise make us cry. We have so many comedians who have enriched themselves by persecuting trans people. We need to have more non-binary, queer people on stage, so people can see we're people, and we're hilarious.
Fun and Slutty premieres at 8 p.m. ET on Jan. 23 on Veep. All Access subscribers can access the special for free as part of their subscription, while individual tickets for the livestream are available for $19.99 with a 7-day rewatch period.
Related: Jonathan Van Ness Turns Heads in Shoulder-Baring Green Gown at Golden Globes 2025
