My chat w/Jai Rodriguez who will co-star with Reba McEntire and Lily Tomlin on ABC’s “Malibu Country”

Landing the role of a sassy music agent on the new ABC Reba McEntire sitcom Malibu Country is more than just another job for Jai Rodriguez.

It’s his best opportunity yet to re-establish himself as an actor after achieving fame as one of the ‘fab five’ of the Emmy-winning Queer Eye which ran for five seasons on Bravo.

‘My career started with scripted then I stumbled into reality with Queer Eye,’ Jai told me in a recent interview for Gay Star News. ‘Ever since then, it’s been a struggle to re-educate everyone that I was an actor before Queer Eye. So it’s so great to finally land something that isn’t a guest spot.’

Not only does he get to star with Reba, also in the cast is the great Lily Tomlin who plays her mother.

‘She is one of the nicest people but she’s also really professional,’ he says of McEntire. ‘She knows stuff about television and angles and how to do things in a way that only an actress who has had her own sitcom for that long knows. But she never makes me feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, she’s very generous. She is a classy lady.’

Of Tomlin he says: ‘I love Lily because every time she sees me she says, ‘You’re so handsome.’ Lily will forever have my heart because she was the first woman to have to own one-woman show on Broadway. I just want to learn from her.’

To read the full story and find out what Jai did to land the role, see my story over at Gay Star News.