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Welcome to not so fabulously. You know, some shows just catch the attention of the zeitgeist and really connect people and bring them together in a good way to tell fantastic stories, and that’s what we try to do every week here on Living Not so fabulously and why we’re excited to bring in today.guest, Emmy Award winner David Collins turned a moment at a Boston art gallery into Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a global celebration of self-love and acceptance.
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Right? This Cincinnati native got his entertainment start as the assistant to Jodie Foster on the movie Little Man Tate, a lucky twist that changed his life. With Midwest charm and Heart, he co-founded Scout Productions, showing that empathy and authenticity make for the best CD. So welcome to the show,
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David.Oh, thank you guys. What a great intro. That’s one of the best interests I think I’ve ever had.
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So right, maybe we, maybe we’ll get an Emmy Awards someday.
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That
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was great, thank you. Yeah,
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thank you. Yeah, so uh let’s start off with this whole idea of the concept of queer eyes. How did you come up with that and, and, and maybe why and uh uh this whole idea of telling straight men how they should be dressing and living.
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Uh, in, uh, in 2003, in the, in the fall, uh, we with Michael and I, Michael Williams, who was my partner, he’s still my business partner, but at that time, he was my, my husband. He and I and our best friends went to the Open studios in South End.Uh, and the South End is kind of like out here in Hollywood, it’s Weiho, it’s the Ghood, uh, in the neighborhood, and um we went to the open studios, and when we came up, uh, these, this big staircase into a big warehouse, uh, there was a couple 100 people inside the warehouse.And as we came up and into the room, it’s like weird hush fell over the room, and we thought it was us, cause we’re like we’re walking into the room, you’re looking right like what’s going on? And also, yeah, it was us. Look how fabulous we are, uh, and, um, the truth of the matter is there’s a woman in the middle of the room just screaming and berating her husband.Been publicly, and I mean destroying him like, look at you, you’re an absolute mess. Your hair, your shoes, your clothes, you, why, why you, why can’t you be more like them? And she points across the room and in the back corner of this big warehouse with champagne flutes and cheese in their hand, these three the most attractive men you’ve ever seen, put together, set their stuff.And they come running to the center of the room and they grab the woman, and they remove her from the husband, and they just start loving on him. Look, you look great and they’re fits in his hair and tucking his shirt in and polishing his shoes and get it and just seriously just loving on him like they’ve never, like you’ve never seen and looking at her like, no, ma’am, that is not how we do this, it’s like this.And I turned to Michael.And this is where this moment of me being a vessel and being aware of the moment, I said, did you see that? That was like queer eye for the straight guy. And as the words came out of my mouth, um, I’m not gonna say that I knew, but he knew, he turned to our best friends and he’s like,I don’t know what that is, but that’s gonna be something. Now, I had no money, and I mean zero money.But I had gotten in the mail one of those uh American Express things where they send you a blank check and in the blank check, yeah, write yourself a check, and, and by the way, it don’t don’t read the fine print that uh if you don’t pay it back in 30 days, it’s 22 or 27% interest compounded daily for the next whatever, right? And um and IDid something that only my 32 year old self would have done through complete night day and and not knowing better or quite frankly, not having a conversation with someone else, and I wrote a check for $5000.And I went down the hallway to this young man named Todd Whipple. He still gets credit for this. He privately was day trading in his office, and I looked at him and I said, if I give you this $5000 can you turn it into $10,000 in like a week? 00, if he didn’t do it.And so he turned that 5 into 10. I paid MX back the 5, and I used the $5000. I hired a photographer, a graphic artist, um, all the guys, uh, Dave Metzler, who’s in here, uh, was my best friend and, and, and the original straight guy. He and I crafted the format together cause we didn’t know what formats were.Um, we built it all out, put it in this, and this $5000 piece of paper became what I took out to pitch.Uh, the show Queer Eye, and I only pitched it to one place, and that was this teeny little network, uh, owned by Rainbow Media, uh, called Bravo, and Bravo had one show inside the actor’s studio, and I pitched the queer eye straight guy, and they just laughed. It was like, I don’t know what the hell that is, but let’s do a pilot, and while we made the pilot, Little Rainbow.got bought by NBC Universal and Bravo, uh, uh, became Bravo because they believed in one show and they launched Bravo on the back of Queer Eye at NBC Universal. And now if you look at Bravo, all five verticals, Top Chef, uh, Project Runway, the they’re all the verticals of Queer Eye, Lawrence Lasnick built on the back of Queer Eye and launched Bravo.
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Wow, that was a fantastic story.
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I, I love that the beginning of your story, you kind of outline that this is kind of like the, the necessity is the mother of invention, right? You’re here, you’re really at a financial point where you don’t have anything to lose, uh, when you, when you do this. How did it, how did it feel? Um.Emotionally, mentally, financially, when you had had all this success, andYeah, that that not only the the the ramp up to things becoming successful, but also what about the, the kind of the all good things must come to an end, and so eventually the shows, the show stopped. How did it feel on both ends of that spectrum?
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Yeah, wow, that’s a great question. Um, look,The initial shock and awe of Queer Eye hitting the way it did was, was really beautiful. Um, the opportunity to, to have these five guys be representative of, you know, we had never seen gay men on TV, real guys, right? Real men being themselves on TV and it was, it was really beautiful, um, to experience the joy of that, but I will say I don’t know that I was perhaps ready.Uh, mentally and, and spiritually to take on the success. Um, it was, it, it, it, it’s a lot of years of, of ups and downs of, of learning toUh, check my ego at the door cause I let myself and my head get bigger, uh, but I also really remind myself that ultimately I was just a vessel. I was at the right place at the right time and saw the right thing and knew that it was my job to do something with it. Um, and that part I, I will say, uh, you know, 22, 23 years later, I’m probably the most proud that, um,You know, the universe and God showed me this and I was able to share it with the world. Um, the journey with Bravo, we made 102 episodes in less than 43.5 years, and, uh, that was insane. David,
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hold that thought. We’ll be right back after this break.
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All right, so welcome back to Living Not So Fabulously. We’re continuing our great interview with David Collins here. Um, so David, we have a, a little bit more serious question to ask you about Queer Eye, um, both iterations. Um, it oftentimes, and what you kind of what you shared at the beginning, there were these kind of five pillars that the show is founded on.Um, and it oftentimes shows the expense side of our balance sheet, right? That, that upgrading our wardrobe, learning to cook a fancy meal, transforming our living space, all of these things can make us feel really good. Um, but from what we’ve seen, um, there hasn’t been much onscreen advice about howTo actually keep that going, right? It’s nice to have somebody else come in and do all that for us, but how do we keep it going? So, we’re just curious, has there ever been any financial advice, um maybe behind the scenes that we’re not aware of that help these individuals move forward and be able to maintain some of this?
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That that’s, it’s a good question, you know, I think we would love to add a financial vertical, right, and to give that advice. I think it it’s, it’s tough sometimes, right, to give specific individual advice. We are, uh, we, we have a new show coming out on Hallmark called The Motherhood with Connie Britton.And uh it’s specific, it’s kind of queer eye for single moms, and so we can lean in a little bit more onto uh in in motherhood, how to help, um, you know, provide for your family under, under a budget and how the budget works and to live within.The constraints and boundaries of a budget. Um, you know, I think Queer Eye in the evolution of Queer Eye from Bravo to Netflix, uh, who knows, maybe the next iteration will, we can lean a little more into the financial side of things to see, look, we all need guidance. I don’t think, uh, you know, I’m a gay in the 80s and I, I definitely was not, was not given good.Financial lessons by my family, my parents, as as a young man. I, I, I really did not have good boundaries in relationship to money. If I had it, I spent it. And um, and while there’s some spiritual logic to that, and the idea that you can’t take it with you, it’s not, it’s not terribly uh uh safe. It’s not terribly uh uh secure for you or your family. So II’ve had as a dad now, right, of, of 16 year old girls and raising a family and being partnered, um, you know, financial responsibility matters. Um, and, and how we pay through to that and hold through to that really counts.
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Yeah, absolutely, definitely. Yeah, I think, you know, we’ve all made money mistakes in our lives, especially LGBTQ plus people. I think a lot of us, especially in adulthood, are trying to make up for lost time. Are there any maybe money mistakes that you could share that you’re willing to share with our audience, uh, from your own personal experience?
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Yeah, I mean, look, again, I, I am, I’m being very honest and involved with here. I am, thank God I have people that help me with money now, right? And help and help take it away from me, more importantly, and do something with it. But I will say at the height.Of Queer Eye success. Um, I, I didn’t know enough to know not what to say or do, and I got into business with a lot of people, and I had a lot of brokers that I said, yeah, let’s go high risk, and so we put all the money in a lot of high risk investment in the in the market, and the crash of 2008 happened.And I, I will just say that the amount of money that I lost, um, is staggering still to this day.Um, breaks my heart. Um, I wish I had even a quarter of that now, um, and, uh, the truth of the matter is, you know, the crash was big.And I don’t, I don’t think we talk about that anymore, but I, I lost, I lost a lot, and my, my, uh, instructions was to just leave the accounts alone, they’ll they’ll come back, just leave them and at that point when the money was gone, I, I grabbed at it to live, right, to survive it and, and when you dwindle that down and all of your Oppenheimer accounts and these accounts and all of that.I basically imploded and and and and lost uh the majority of the of the finances um from the original career.
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So just to be clear, did you panic sell or did your stocks just lose position because you were in such a risky position?
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Yeah, yeah, it, it was a little book. They definitely lost value for sure, right, during the, during the crash, but at the same time, I panic. I was like, get me out, give me out, give me out. And I ended up taking, they, they were saying, leave it alone, leave it alone, don’t touch, don’t touch, don’t touch, but I think at that point I had lost so much my fear was up here andI, I went, you know, it was scary. That’s all I can say. It got, it got scary fast, and, uh, and look, the crash hurt. It was tough, uh, still to this day, I, I can, I can feel, you know, your body holds the trauma. I feel, I feel the trauma for sure.
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Yeah, well, and that’s so it’s important advice for those of us who are dealing with today’s market. Yeah.
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It is happening today, that is for sure.Right, globally, right? It feels scary everywhere right now.
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Yeah, we got a hold on the railings. Yeah.
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So David, uh, you by many accounts have a life that many in our community would be envious of. I mean, you’ve had multiple hit shows, you’ve won 11 Emmys, you rub elbows with celebrities, but we all know that on the outside.Doesn’t always reflect what we’re feeling on the inside, or maybe some of the things that we’re truly going through. So, just curious, going back to the very beginning of this episode, when you talked about that fear of not having any money. Uh do you stress about money anymore? Are you in a situation where you’re stress free financially?
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Oh,I, I, you know, look, I, I wish I could say I was, I’m not. I, um, I, I am not, uh.Look, I’m not destitute by any means, shape or form, but I support a lot of folks. I take care of a lot of people. I have a family in Ohio. I have a lot of, a lot of people that rely on me.And so maybe it’s self-imposed, but I, uh, my anxiety around money, you know, ebbs and flows pretty frequently in my life. Um, I think it would be false of me to say, yeah, well, things are great, just lead them back, enjoying life. It, it is not that. Um, I, uh, look, our industries.Having a lot of trouble right now, right? Hollywood is trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. How is this business model, this old business model evolving into something new. Um, but, uh, my, what I will say is this, and this is a spiritual truth for myself, is that, um,I have never, I’ve never not been provided for. Um, I’m a really hard worker. I’ve worked since I was 11 years old. I believe that old saying, work hard and be nice to people, uh, pays off. It’s a mantra that I live by. It’s the one, it’s the only one framed poster that I have in the house that my kids have seen at the breakfast table since they were born.Uh, work hard to be nice to people, and, and that’s, that’s my through line with my own kids, and, and that’s the truth for myself. I’m committed to working hard, uh, being kind to people, and I do believe that when you do work hard and are kind, uh, it comes back, and it comes back because when you’re hard, you get paid, and if you’re good at what you’re doing, you get paid well, and uh and I I appreciate working hard and and being paid for what I do.Does that make sense? Thanks for being vulnerable like
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that. Yeah, thanks for being vulnerable like that. I think there’s just this this perception that, well, everybody else just, they don’t have that stress anymore. If I just have this income or if I just get this job or land this contract or whatever, I won’t stress about money and I thinkI, I know very few people regardless of their income level, regardless of what their success level that for whatever reason, just don’t stress about money.
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Yeah, it’s not a reality, right? That’s just not, because by the way, the more you have, the higher your living, the more expenses, the more it takes, it all cyclical, it all pours into a, a bigger fund.And you’re like, ah, um, we live humbly. I, my kids and I, and, uh, uh, we’re, you know, they, they, they go to a very nice school. They have a great setup in life, but I, I like to remind them like, look, we ultimately, it’s all about working hard, so that’s where
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we are.Yeah, but it’s definitely nice to hear that you are doing your part in helping taking care of other people. I think that it’s oftentimes we feel that obligation, the more money we make, that that there’s a larger group of people that we want to help, that especially when we’re able to, yeah.So one last question for you here. Um, there’s a growing acceptance there there was a growing acceptance for LGBT people in the early 2000s, I think in part because we saw shows like Ellen and Will and Grace and and Queer Eye, maybe expanded on that further. When you look at what’s going on today with the attacks on the community, attacks on DEI.And you think back to a young David David Collins, do you think that you would still have the same opportunities to break through today in today’s environment?
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Hm.It’s a great question. Um,Look, I do tell this story a lot. I, I was, you know, a gay in the eighties, the Southern Baptist evangelical self, and, and there was that voice inside of me that told me there was something more. There was that voice inside me that told me that to know what that preacher saying to you is not true, keep going.And I, and I believe that’s true today, right? Um, if, if there’s anything that this 58 year old version of myself, 57 now, 58 in June, but this, this 57 and 3/4 uh version of myself would be to remind all of the, the young LGBT uh QIA folks that we are, we’re a family, we’re a team, and what’s different.now is that we see each other and we need to be here for each other. We need to put the unity back in community. We need to be a family, we need to look out for each other. Um, your podcast and your program right now is a part of that. You’re reminding our community, look, hey, we deserve all the same rights, equal rights, the same rights. We’re gonna fight for the same things, and, and honestly,It, it brings us full circle, right? When we do the work, it pays off, when we look at each other and we tell each other our stories, and we see each other’s humanity. Wow, opportunity for change, transformation, and lifting each other up. That’s, that’s that’s.Infinite. That’s forever. That doesn’t change in the past 20 years. That should be forever going forward. Um, and, and I’m so grateful that I got this opportunity to spend time with you guys today and tell a little bit about my story, because I do believe by telling my story, someone else is gonna to tell theirs or they’re going to hear mine but, oh, wow, and that connection happens and we get to, we get to be part of the larger community.
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Absolutely, thank you so much for sharing that. So my David, what’s your takeaway?
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Yeah, so I think one of the things that’s really important is it’s it’s really easy to make assumptions aboutUh, what other people’s lives are like based on outward appearances, especially when we’re scrolling through social media. Um, but I think it’s also important to remember that not everybody has the life that we think that they do. Oftentimes what’s going on on our inside is very different, and we need to give each other grace and allowances when it comes to what we think of each other.
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Yeah.Absolutely. And I think I I I’m going to stress to all of our listeners and viewers to remember David’s story and not panic. So. I think a lot of us are a little bit scared right now with the market and thinking about selling and that may not be the appropriate time to do that. So please definitely talk to your financial advisor before you make any drastic moves and maybe listen to them a little bit more now than you may otherwise would.
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So thank you again.Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. You remember, you can catch new episodes of Living Not So Fabulously every Wednesday at noon Eastern on Yahoo Finance, YouTube or wherever you binge your favorite podcasts. And
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remember to like, subscribe where available and set notifications because when you do, a straight, straight guy’s queer eye teaches him the difference between serum and moisturizer. So until next time, stay fabulous.
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This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.