Karamo Brown says 'Queer Eye' producers orchestrated terrifying police stop

This story originally appeared on Out.Fab Five member Karamo Brown is finally opening up about being “terrified” during an incident where he was pulled over by a cop on an episode of Queer Eye, which he claims was orchestrated by producers.Only three episodes into the first season of the popular Netflix show, the cast was in a car being driven by Brown when they were pulled over by a police officer.Brown and the rest of the cast — costar Bobby Berk was the only one aware they were going to be pulled over — look visibly nervous before the cop finally admits that he’s the one who nominated his friend to be on the show. At the time, the episode opened up a conversation between Cory Waldrop, the man they were supposed to makeover, about Brown’s fear of interacting with the police as a person of color.“When we have the driving scene in the morning, we all fight over who’s going to drive. That morning, I was adamant that I wanted to drive,” Brown told BuzzFeed in 2018 after the episode had premiered. “I’m glad that that happened, because then it allowed a conversation to happen that probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been in the driver’s seat.”Now that the show’s final season aired, Brown opened up in an interview with People for its June cover story about the behind-the-scenes drama and toxic dynamics on the show, and his real feelings about the faux-police incident. “You can see, because it made it in the episode, real fear in my face and my castmates’ face because none of us know what was going on," he said. "And at that moment I realized I don’t have my license, I’m in the South, I’m a Black man, and I do not feel safe right now.” See on Instagram Brown claimed the show used his race in a calculated way to create a more dramatic moment for the show, without consideration to how the scene would impact him, including the cop behaving in an “aggressive” manner, and asking him to step out of the car.“It was not ac