Will They Revoke Antoni Porowski's Queer Card? 'I Check Some Gay Boxes - but Not All of Them!'

"Queer Eye" celebrity chef Antoni Porowski joked that he doesn't his every single stereotype for a gay man. Speaking with Variety's Marc Malkin on the "Just for Variety" podcast, Porowski said he was unfamiliar with "Wicked" before seeing the new film version, never having caught the show on stage.

"Full disclosure, I hadn't seen the musical, and I wasn't really sure what it was about," the food and beverage pro disclosed. "I check some gay boxes," Porowski went on to say, "but not all of them, you know?"

"We're off to a great start," Porowksi went on to exclaim. "I've already disappointed you!"

The culinary expert made the even bigger admission that "Queer Eye" might be wearing thin for him.

"I'm literally looking up synonyms on words," Porowski explained of the show, which recently finished airing its ninth season. "How do I ask in a different way, 'Tell me about your relationship with food?' Or, 'What did your grandma make for you?'"

The arrival of interior design expert Jeremiah Brent in the show's most recent season following the departure of original cast member Bobby Berk gave the show an infusion of fresh energy. Said Porowski: "I can get emotional thinking about it, him coming in with just with a new set of eyes."

His mindset now is that he's hoping for a Season 10 for the show, and he expressed the hope that the show might do more to tell transgender stories. "I believe we've only had two trans stories on 'Queer Eye.' Maybe three. So, like, there are more to tell there."

The cooking guru added that the show is more important than ever at a time when the queer community has come under intense attack from Republican politicians and others on the hard right – something he called "extremely terrifying, to put it lightly."

"If we don't continue to tell those stories, history will repeat itself," Porowski told Malkin. "We are seeing signs and symbols of the past that are coming up on podiums by very powerful people, and it's extremely problematic to say the least."

The serious subject matter didn't dampen the conversation's energy, as Porowski talked about his other current TV project, NetGeo's "There's No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski," explaining that he had an "idea... that was definitely revolving around storytelling through food".

Porowski went on to say that the new show is "an amalgamation of all our different ideas and all these cooks in the proverbial, and literal, sometimes, kitchen."

"On journeys toward cultural and personal discovery, Porowski travels with Awkwafina, Henry Golding, James Marsden, Florence Pugh, Issa Rae, and Justin Theroux to South Korea, Malaysian Borneo, Germany, the United Kingdom, Senegal, and Italy," National Geographic.com detailed.

"Through sharing family stories and connections with food, the docuseries examines each person's rich heritage through their ancestors' culinary traditions."

"Each episode features Porowski traveling with a celebrity guests to locations around the world to explore their ancestry and how it may have informed their eating habits and family traditions," Variety explained.

Speaking about his own family's culinary heritage, Porowski, the son of Polish immigrants, said, "I describe my own connection to cuisine as a deep obsession, but I'm sure there's a reason why my family is so connected with food.

"Both of my grandfathers were in concentration camps," he added. "As a child, I heard the stories about not wasting anything on your plate."

"If 'No Taste Like Home' is renewed," Variety noted, "Porowksi would love to visit Poland with Martha Stewart to explore their Polish roots."

In the meantime, Porowski recalled how he had been invited to attend a commemoration for the 80th anniversary of the notorious Nazi death camp Auschwitz. "And at this gala there were 17 Holocaust survivors that showed up.... it's not a positive topic of conversation, but it is important, and it is inspiring" that they survived the horrors of the camp and went on to lead their lives, and to remember the lessons of history.

The cooking celeb opined that people from across the political spectrum have a responsibility to "tell diverse stories" as a hedge against a return of the horrors of the past.

"If we continue to tell those stories, we're going to remember them," Porowski said of authentic history that doesn't simply paint over the suffering and tragedy of the past, "and there's less of a chance that we're going to repeat the same patterns or that we're going to stand for it if we see those patterns coming back to life."

Listen to Porowski chatting with Malkin below.