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Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown has opened up about a botched plastic surgery experience that left him in chronic pain.
Brown, 45, told People in an article published on Tuesday, June 2, that a 2021 buccal fat removal procedure caused scar tissue to block saliva in his cheeks from draining.
“For years, people have been, like, ‘Karamo’s had plastic surgery. He has so much filler in his face,’” the reality TV star told the outlet. “I was like, ‘You know what? I can’t say anything because you can’t get into fights with the trolls.’ But I was suffering for years in pain and no one knew.”
Brown detailed that once salvia built up within each of his cheeks, scar tissue would harden. “There’d be times you’d see me smile, and it was tight,” he said. “My cheeks would be big because they were full of saliva, full of scar tissue. I was in the worst pain.”
Brown, who joined Netflix’s reboot of Queer Eye in 2018, also told the outlet that he signed up for the procedure after “gaining about 70 pounds during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
He recalled of the time, “I was a big boy, and everyone online liked to tell me how much of a big boy I was. So, I was like, ‘OK, maybe if I slim out my face, I’ll be cute.’ It turned into a year-and-a-half of pain.”
The former MTV Real World cast member added that the pain he experienced intensified after the premiere of his daytime talk show, The Karamo Show, in 2022. (It was cancelled in March after four seasons.)
“I would shoot six episodes a day, and there’d be times when I was filming my show that my mouth would get so dry and it would be so swollen,” he told the outlet before confirming that he lost 70 pounds in an attempt to mask the scar tissue’s bulge. “The more weight I lost, the less scar tissue you could see,” he explained. “The scar tissue and the saliva were still there, but because I was skinnier, it looked kind of normal. I stopped eating because it helped the feeling of not having so much scar tissue.”
In recent months, Brown “underwent a procedure to fix his saliva glands” which removed scar tissue in his cheeks.
Brown has had a rocky 2025 in other ways, too. In February, his ex Carlos Medel confirmed his split from Brown via an Instagram post. “Although this year I’m single, I still want to make sure love is around! All my love to my friends and family, thank you for being part of my life one more year!” Medel wrote after embarking on a romance with Brown in 2021.
Brown’s interview with People also explored his experience filming Queer Eye with his Fab Five costars, all of whom were divided according to Brown after a sexual harassment complaint was filed against him. (The show’s final season 10 premiered on January 21, and Brown was the only cast member who did not promote the season ahead of its premiere.)
Brown described the set of Queer Eye as a work environment filled with alleged poor behavior. “Everyone would just say, ‘Well, that’s just that person,’ instead of saying, ‘This behavior does not fly in a professional environment,’” he claimed. “It impacted me negatively, consistently.”
He also says that he was cleared of any wrongdoing behind the scenes of Queer Eye.
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