Queer Eye's Antoni Porowski Gets Nostalgic in Netflix's 'Easy-Bake Battle'

"In the food space, we have such a wonderful opportunity to tell diverse stories."

Do you sometimes miss the childlike joy of making that single cookie in an Easy-Bake Oven? Well, Queer Eye's Antoni Porowski is ready to scratch that nostalgic itch with Netflix's Easy-Bake Battle: The Home Cooking Competition (October 12). "It was a long time in the making," Porowski says about the reality series where home cooks compete in both sweet and savory cooking challenges for a $100,000 grand prize, using full-size ovens with restrictions mimicking the classic toy ones. "These innovative home cooks...show the genius stuff they come up with." The contestants' diversity was important to Porowski, an executive producer of the series. "I think in the food space, we have such a wonderful opportunity to tell diverse stories." No matter who you are, "show us who you are through your food...open up that little personal culinary memoir of yours." What does Porowski like to cook in the small ovens? "A classic Easy-Bake Oven is perfect to toast your nuts because they will never burn. They get really nice and crunchy and brown."

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Where did the idea for the show come from?

It was a long time in the making. When Queer Eye was rebooted, there were so many people who were so curious to see what the new iteration of the show was going to be for Netflix. Because there was a familiarity. I used to watch it with my sisters and my family. It was what they call a four quadrant show that you can watch the whole family together. I knew that I wanted to do some kind of cooking competition show, taking notes of what I learned from Queer Eye. The thought of really empowering people, taking somebody like a home cook and showing that what they do has just as much worth because it's not explored and displayed on the public stage. Well, until Easy Bake Battle, because now we are literally doing that. And just the idea of making everything easy is kind of what I do. It's figuring out simpler ways of how to get dinner on the table quicker. We decided to do a show about it paired with my love of Jeopardy and the idea that a person can continue on to win $100,000 and go through the challenges as we get to know more about their personalities. That's kind of how it came to be.

The nostalgia factor is big on this show.

Totally. I think that it's nostalgic but at the same time, it really is these innovative home cooks who do not pursue the culinary arts in a professional capacity and showing the genius stuff they come up with.

What were you nostalgic for? What would you have made in an Easy-Bake Oven?

I wasn't allowed fast food, except on my birthday. My parents would throw a party at McDonald's and I would have that wonderful sheet cake with a sweet frosting and cheeseburgers and the nuggets. And I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons Duck Tales, Care Bears, you name it. And there would be commercials for Easy-Bake and they had collabs with McDonald's and Pizza Hut. It was mind blowing. Just the thought that I could have something that was so indulgent and decadent. What we do with the show also is that there are baking challenges and things on the sweet side. We try to balance it out with a lot of savory because most of the time people are creating savory meals.

I remember wanting an Easy-Bake Oven but my parents not letting me have one because it was a "girls" toy.

I don't think my parents denied me, but I do remember I was obsessed with G.I. Joes as a kid. I had all the G.I. Joes and my cousin Maya, who lived down the street, had a bunch of Barbies, and she had Barbie's Corvette, and I was like, when the G.I. Joes aren't saving the world, they need a really cool convertible. So she let me borrow her convertible, but it was too big for the G.I. Joes and it kind of looked a little ridiculous. I look at my partner's nephews, the way that they're being raised, they're into sports and activities, but they're also into Frozen and Frozen characters, and it's totally okay. They want to buy toys that are pink and purple, because their parents encourage that. Sometimes I look at the stuff that they have and I'm sort of like, wow, I wonder how I would have been different if that was a little more of the social norm when I was growing up.

The show also really has a wide swath of types of people feeling the nostalgia for the Easy-Bake Oven.

Absolutely. I will not take any credit for casting, but being an executive producer of the show, I wanted the same thing that we try to push the envelope with diversity on Queer Eye and we wanted to be able to do that with Easy-Bake as well. It was the first or second episode, we have a bro ex-football player who used to make Sloppy Joes and Frito pies for his friends, to a Kurdish mom who had to flee Kurdistan and has never documented any of her recipes whose kids encouraged her to go on the show to show what her culture was like, to the LGBTQIA plus experience to just keeping it as open as possible. I think in the food space, we have such a wonderful opportunity to tell those diverse stories.

Food really is something to connect over with others.

From the judges to myself, what we try to encourage, in every single episode, show us who you are through your food. You will come a lot closer to winning if you genuinely show us who you are, where you're from, what it was like, the food that you ate when you were growing up, the type of stuff that you eat every day, what your reality is like, open up that little personal culinary memoir of yours and just like bring it to us.

What are some surprising things you can cook in an Easy-Bake?

I will say a classic Easy-Bake Oven is perfect to toast your nuts because they will never burn you. You render some of that fat and they get really nice and crunchy and brown. And Jacques Torres made his world-famous chocolate chip cookie in an Easy-Bake and it was just as good.

What inspired you to do the pet food brand Yummers with Jonathan Van Ness?

During the pandemic, I went from doing everything to doing nothing at all, and I needed some kind of purpose and I was in my head. Fostering a dog was perfect for me because I got to focus on her potty training, feeding her her meals, taking her on walks, all of that. And I just started researching different things that you can give dogs and I started creating my own meal toppers. I learned that she sheds twice a year very aggressively and she has this blonde hair that shows everywhere. So I started reading about omega threes and fish oils, how they're actually good over time for their healthy skin and coat and helping prevent shedding. So when I would roast a whole section of salmon, I would have this mushy skin that was left underneath, so I started chopping it up and adding it in [her food]. And then I started feeding her only wet food to switch things up and TMI, her stools were way too wet. So I was like, okay, what can I start giving? Sweet potatoes are really good for them. And so when JVN and I started exploring the idea, we met this incredible woman named Rebecca Rudisch, who ran PeCco for a really long time. She's probably even more pet obsessed than we are. And so we were involved in the recipe testing and learning the nutritional value of food is fully maintained when things are freeze-dried, and it's actually good for their teeth because it scrapes the tartar off and all that kind of stuff. And so that journey for me has been the most fascinating. It was just such a fun process, and it was such a natural fit.

Early on, when Queer Eye started, you were subjected to both praise but also some intense negative attention. In a mental health capacity, how did you handle that?

So, I'm going to take you back to season one of Queer Eye. The first few weeks, it was like an overwhelming flood of positivity and love. I remember all this love came in and I was thinking, 'Oh, like this is what fame is like. Okay, awesome.' And then there was just a barrage of, 'Can he cook? He used avocados in two episodes consecutively.' There are days where you can put a post on Instagram, and you can look at 100 positive comments, but if you look at one negative, it takes you down. And by you, I mean, me. So I brought it up in therapy, which I'm glad you touched on mental health. I was talking to my therapist about it. And she's like, 'What do we know about you? You're a people pleaser, right? So you set yourself up in this life where it is physically impossible for you to make everybody happy. What you can do is check your intentions.' I went through a period where I read everything. And then that wasn't working because it was taking too much of a toll. Then I cut myself off completely and felt completely detached. So I did figure out a healthy system where I work with a lovely PR firm. They send me a grouping of all the articles. And if there's anything that we want to talk about, if there's anything that I read that's negative, I'm like, is this something that I should genuinely be concerned about? It's always much more severe in my mind. Because if it's something directed towards me, I feel like I'm at the center of it, but in the grand scheme of things, there's a million different things going on in the world that are so much more important. At the end of the day, it's all about perspective and having a big picture.

It's almost like people need a sounding board and they can take it out on public figures.

You see this with a lot of public figures, it's like one day they are beloved, and then something happens, whether it's founded or unfounded or silly or trivial or actually legitimate, people can turn and then in the American entertainment industry, we love a comeback as well. It's a good reminder that nothing lasts forever and just let people play it out. But for me, I always try to check my intention. Can someone be angry that I put Greek yogurt into guacamole? Yeah, they're allowed to be pissed about it. They're human. I have strong opinions about food too. The stuff that I see on Tik Tok that I get enraged about, crumbling Pringles onto a casserole—although that can be a little delicious if they stay crunchy. But everyone's entitled to their opinions and I'm not here to make everybody happy. I'm here to share what I know and what I've learned. That's really the best that I can do.

Queer Eye has had such an impact. What do you think it is about it that people connected with and how long do you think it can last?

That's a really good question. So we just finished a season in New Orleans and we had one in Austin, as well. After the first two to three episodes in Austin, I remember speaking to our showrunner, who's like our mama bear, I went up to her and I was like, 'I don't think I can do it.' She's like, 'What are you talking about?' I was like, 'I feel like I've said everything that needs to be said, I've done the thing. What do I need to do differently? Like, do I need to be funnier? Do I need to study this? Should I try being more technical?' And she's like, 'No. If this person is interested in going to culinary school, by all means. But like, they're not going to make this other than the scene that they have with you. Make something that is sustainable, that they're going to repeat over time, meet them where they're at, that is the point of our show. It's not you showing off your skills and what you think you know, what you've trained yourself to believe you have to like, push out all the clutter and just focus on that.' And to that point, she reminded me in Austin, and she was like, 'No, you're just finally comfortable with yourself. And you're not trying to go in and manipulate a situation, you're going in with open-ended questions. And you're figuring out what you want to do.' And to that point, I think that kindness will never go out of style. I don't think that we'll ever get tired of true kindness, not just performative, but actually showing up, seeing how somebody lives, seeing where you can help them and not going in with the assumption that they want to connect to their heritage, no matter how important I think that may be, or thinking that somebody wants to explore healthier living, unless they say it, it is none of my business to make that assumption of a person. The more stories we tell on Queer Eye we all realize that we've barely scratched the surface. We're a sliver of the experience of the LGBTQIA+ population, just like the heroes are a sliver of the human experience. I just hope that we get to keep on going to different places. I have heard this said, the ones where we come in and we're so uncomfortable because I'm looking at this person and I'm like, I'm just waiting for the Trump banner to come out. And it's those people that I think I'm going to have zero connection with, that I come in with all my assumptions—and look, I'll be honest, a lot of times, I'm right and we disagree fundamentally on some very core issues—but when you get to learn about how they were raised, and what it was like growing up, and what they had, and what they didn't have, and what they saw and what they didn't see growing up, you start to understand them better. And it's harder to go in with a defensiveness or assumptions in general.

Listen to H. Alan Scott on Newsweek's Parting Shot. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Twitter: @HAlanScott