“Queer Eye” star Antoni Porowski may seem always coiffed and confident on television — but in a new interview the food and wine guru reveals that he has struggled for years with anxiety.
The 35-year-old said he started feeling anxious in his 20s, when he was figuring out what to do with his life while juggling college and multiple jobs.
“In my early 20s it was about the big things and the little things,” Porowski said in an interview on “The Goopfellas Podcast.” “It was about the big things like, what do I want to do with my life? Do I want to be a psychologist, or do I want to be an actor? I wanted to be all these things and I couldn’t sort of focus, and then even the little things like … am I making the right choice or is there a better one? Little things like that can cause me severe anxiety as well.”
Porowski said that while he finally found a solid career on “Queer Eye,” he continues to grapple with the same struggles today.
“Fast track to 15 years later and I still have anxiety, I’m happy to report,” he joked. “Its just part of me so I might as well just accept it.”
Now the star finds he has the tools to properly manage his anxiety, saying that the first step is accepting that anxiety is a part of who he is.
He also said he is less anxious when he takes care of his health by eating well and getting eight hours of sleep.
“Sadly it’s not a cure but its more about accepting it when it comes and being like ‘Oh, hello little friend. There you are.’ But now I have tools and there are things I can do to work with it like not consuming as much caffeine as I would normally like to,” he said, adding that he’s down to just five cups of coffee a day.
He also takes comfort in knowing that other people are dealing with the same types of struggles.
“You realize you’re not the only one who’s going through this like, you’re not terminally unique and plenty of people have dealt with it in the past and have survived and are even thriving,” he said.
The “Antoni in the Kitchen” author also addressed how he deals with harsh criticism as someone who lives in the public eye.
“If you get me on the right day I remind myself I am enough. I have enough and not everyone is going to love me, which was the biggest lesson of all time,” he said, reminiscing about a scathing article about him when he first started out. “What I learned was if you’re going to be taking all of the good and all of the love, you have to take criticism as well and it was the ultimate lesson for me because it was like, you know what, not everyone’s going to like everything that you do and all I can do is like stay in my lane.”