Black-ish creative Kenya Barris teams with sexually-fluid Queer Eye foodie for new streamer on modern dating.
Donald PadgettThe love life of Queer Eye reboot’s Antoni Porowski is the basis of a new Netflix rom-com according to reports. The streamer, entitled Girls & Boys, is loosely based on the Fab Five food and wine guy’s experiences dating both men and women. Porowoski developed the series with Black-ish creative Kenya Barris.
Porowsi previously revealed that he prefers to live without a label rather than identify as strictly gay. “I feel like if I do refer to myself as gay, which would make it easier for people to understand sometimes, I feel like it dishonours women that I’ve been in love with,” he told GQ last year. He's since went on to say that he felt shame growing up with the label because he "didn't know too many people [he] could relate to."
The first-generation Canadian born to Polish immigrant parents is a self-taught cook and careful to bill himself as a food and wine expert on Queer Eye rather than a chef. He is known for his skin-tight t-shirts, penchant for all things avocado, and a welcome honesty about his personal life such as his struggle with anxiety. Porowski's also not above passing out helpful tips on getting choked during sex, as he did in a past Buzzfeed interview (hint: safe signals work better than safe words when you can’t breathe).
The new show should have a lot to mine from as Porowski has previously admitted to having a "pathological need for everybody to love him." Put that in a dating context and ... whew. Comedy indeed.
His collaborator, Kenya Barris is quite the name in television. Barris recently signed a three-year, eight-figure deal with Netflix to develop new television projects for the streaming giant. He has upcoming screenplay credits for the sequel to Coming to America and the remake of Robert Zemeckis’s The Witches.
"Kenya Barris is one of our great modern storytellers,” Cindy Holland, vice president of originals at Netflix, said in a statement at the time. “Kenya uses his voice to make audiences more aware of the world around them, while simultaneously making them laugh."
Hulu’s Plus One directors Andrew Rhymer and Jeff Chan will write the screenplay for Girls & Boys. Their previous writing credits include the PEN15, for which they earned WGA Award nominations.
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0Antoni Porowski’s Love Life to Inspire New Netflix Rom-Com
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