Jai Rodriguez is an award-winning actor and television personality. While he has had a long career on both stage and television, he shot to fame on the reality show Queer Eye for the Straight Man for the network Bravo. It featured five gay men educating a man on several different fields such as fashion, interior design and culture (Rodriguez was the host of this last element).

Rodriguez’s role as the Culture Guide on this show was influenced by his career (and knowhow) on the stage – he took several significant roles on Broadway. In fact, his debut on the Broadway stage was at 18 as Angel in the musical Rent. This hugely popular rock musical exhibited his well-rounded talent from a young age, and he obtained several other stage roles such as the lead in the off-broadway Zanna, Don’t!. He directed himself in the show Jai Rodriguez: xPosed, which was concerned with the difficulties he experienced of being a young gay male in a religious family.

He took a regular role on the ABC sitcom Malibu Country from 2012-13. He has frequently flexed his musical muscles on stage, and created a cabaret show Twisted Cabaret, which he performed for several years in New York. In addition to this, he released an album, Broken, in 2007. His other ventures include co-authoring the bestselling book Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: The Fab Five’s Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better. Most recently, he has been in the docuseries Equal, playing the political activist and first openly gay candidate for public office Jose Sarria.