Queer Eye, Netflix’s longest-running unscripted series, ended with its 10th and final season in D.C., showcasing everyday heroes that often give more than they get.
(Courtesy Mike Devereaux)
Courtesy Mike Devereaux
(Courtesy Netflix)
Courtesy Netflix
(Courtesy Mike Devereaux)
Courtesy Mike Devereaux
(Courtesy Mike Devereaux)
Courtesy Mike Devereaux
(Courtesy Mike Devereaux)
Courtesy Mike Devereaux
“Queer Eye,” Netflix’s longest-running unscripted series, ended with its 10th and final season in D.C., showcasing everyday heroes that often give more than they get.
One of them is Michael Devereaux, an 11th and 12th grade history teacher at Digital Pioneers Academy in Southeast D.C.
Devereaux said he was surprised when he found out a colleague nominated him for the show.
“I was taken aback. I was nervous, instantly,” Devereaux said.
He said he got a phone call from the production team in New York. Soon after, more calls followed until filming began.
The heartwarming show highlights “everyday heroes” nominated by family or friends to get a bit of TLC and a transformational makeover.
The show’s ‘Fab Five’ hosts are experts who make over people’s lives in five areas. Antoni Porowski teaches cooking and eating tips, Tan France offers fashion advice, Jonathan van Ness handles grooming, Karamo Brown acts as a life coach offering mental health support, and the newest member, Jeremiah Brent, focuses on interior design.
Devereaux’s shaggy hair and laid-back Southern California vibe worked for him, he told WTOP, describing his style before the makeover as “practical.”
He soon found himself at the center of the Fab Five’s signature makeover magic. But he also made sure to share the spotlight with his school.
He suggested upgrading the teachers’ lounge, which he told producers was cramped and outdated.
“What they created for us was something wholly different, it feels like a restaurant or a coffee shop or a hotel,” he said. “All the furniture in there is very, very high end. There’s nothing in there that’s cheap or poorly made. And so you feel like, ‘wow, this is a place we can really be in.’ We can relax and people can work in there, people meet in there.”
Over a week, the once-drab and cluttered teachers’ lounge was transformed into a chic and mature space with high-end coffeemakers, comfortable chairs and faux wood paneling.
Devereaux said he hasn’t watched the episode yet because “when I watch it, it’ll feel really over, the whole journey of it. It still feels very alive to me.”
While he said he hasn’t kept up with the style tips he got from France and van Ness, he said he learned a lot from the cooking experience.
“I felt like my time with Antoni, as a conversation, was just real and authentic,” he said. “He gave us cookware and knives that are awesome. So we think of him every day.”
He added that in an off-camera conversation with Brown, he was given some words of affirmation: “He wanted me to say the idea of, ‘I’m good enough, I’m great.’ … At the moment, it felt very significant. And I had him write that down on a napkin.”
Devereaux said he also connected to the show’s design guy, Brent. “I really loved spending time with Jeremiah,” he said. “I felt like he had an effect on me. … I just felt really grateful to just be with him.”
Why wait?
The experience meant a lot to Devereaux, who spent 15 years as a pastor before making a midlife career change to teaching.
While working as a bivocational pastor and a teaching assistant in Brooklyn, he decided to switch paths.
“I always used to joke that someday when I retire, I’m going to become a social studies teacher in a small town,” he said. “Why not become a teacher now and not wait till retirement? So that was really it. It was that transition of out of something and into something else.”
When the pandemic hit, he was in the process of getting his teacher’s license while working part-time at a school in Minnesota. When classes went online, he and his wife Nicole decided to buy a RV and travel around the U.S. with their two daughters.
“We did that for two years, 16,000 miles and 34 states,” he said.
After their time on the road, his wife decided to go to law school and got a scholarship to the American University Washington College of Law in D.C. The family put down roots and has lived in Northwest D.C. ever since.
“We love D.C.,” he said. “I love, obviously, history and all the stuff that happened here, or is happening here.”
‘You need a place to talk’
Although he moved away from the religious vocation, Devereaux said many of the skills he developed as a pastor carried over into his work as a teacher.
“I just really enjoyed it, and I didn’t have any expectations or goals in it. I just found myself really enjoying it,” he said.
Devereaux said he was drawn to Digital Pioneers Academy because he values the opportunity to work in schools that serve underprivileged students.
But when he was chosen for “Queer Eye,” he worried about being singled out as one of the few white teachers at the predominantly Black school.
“My initial reaction was definitely nervousness and concern, because it’s an all-Black school, and there’s, of the 35 teaching staff, only maybe four white staff. I’m definitely part of the family, but there was a feeling of ‘I don’t want to be selected out or highlighted in any way as the white man in an all-Black school,’” he said.
While highlighting teacher burnout in the episode, Devereaux noted how teachers often take on multiple roles when working with young people.
“They’re like (my) kids to me, my sons to me,” he said.
Before he was hired at the school, four students had been killed by gun violence within a 10-month span.
Devereaux said it’s clear that has taken a toll on other students, saying there are still “many psychological things that still kind of waft in the school from just having seen that. … Thankfully, they are going past it and growing into young men, but … it’s going to be with them forever.”
While doing a cooking lesson with Porowski, Devereaux said talking to other teachers that have similar worries for their students helps him process the oftentimes stressful load.
“When you’re a teacher, no matter how good the school is, you need a place to talk. … And if you don’t, then you just keep it inside and I think it’s really harmful,” he said.
Devereaux described the show’s process as authentic and unscripted.
“It’s real, like what you see is what you get, and they don’t tell you what to say or how to say it. They don’t retake it,” he said.
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