Tan France cried a lot while filming the latest season of 'Queer Eye': 'This was a much more emotional journey'

• Tan France told Insider that the seventh season of "Queer Eye" was the hardest one to film. 
• France became emotional after seeing the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.
• France also explained how the upcoming season of "Next in Fashion" ups the ante for contestants.

For "Queer Eye" fashion guru Tan France, shooting the newest season of the award-winning reality show was a very emotionally charged experience.

The seventh season of "Queer Eye," which doesn't have a release date yet, sees the Fab Five — France, Jonathan Van Ness, Karamo Brown, Bobby Berk, and Antoni Porowski — spend time in New Orleans this time around.

But witnessing the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the city in 2005, proved particularly challenging for France.

"It was seeing just what has happened to the city and the state and to the people, and how it's affected them," France, who's promoting his collaboration with Starbucks and its Spring Coffee Break campaign, told Insider. "But my main emotions have changed in general ever since I became a parent. I just am a crier now. So I'm a lot more in touch with my emotions. And so there are many reasons why this was a much more emotional journey."

France and his husband, Rob, welcomed their son Ismail in July 2021.

Since then, the couple has made concerted efforts to protect Ismail, from shielding his identity on social media to building a new home with a schoolroom in Salt Lake City where they can homeschool Ismail with their friends' children. 

The style guru, who had Ismail with him in New Orleans while shooting "Queer Eye," teased at the people, or "heroes," who would be featured in the upcoming season. 

"Each of our heroes come from a really diverse background — and by that, I don't mean just ethnic or sexuality," France explained. "I mean, different from the lives that we live or what many people may live. New Orleans went through a heck of a lot of turmoil with the last couple of decades and how they've recovered and in many cases not recovered from that."

"And so that story is very precious to really give our opinions on aspects or topics that we haven't really talked about on the show before," he said.

France also weighed in on the second season of Netflix's "Next in Fashion," which debuts on Friday. France cohosts this new season with Gigi Hadid, who replaced Alexa Chung. 

For France, the experience of shooting this season with Hadid was a cakewalk. The two friends have known each other for nearly five years and traded parenting tips. (Hadid shares 2-year-old daughter Khai with ex-boyfriend Zayn Malik.)

"It was just us talking about people's clothes that we would do on her sofa whilst watching TV — something that we do in real life basically," France recalled of filming the show with Hadid. "Nothing hard about that. The only hard part is that we are both new parents, and at that time, we would watch newer parents as they juggled personal life with work life."

He added: "But the show itself was not hard at all. It was five weeks of bliss."

But aside from "Next in Fashion" and "Queer Eye," France is also partnering with Starbucks on its Spring Coffee Break campaign to help coffee lovers add a seasonal refresh to their daily routines this spring. There's even a chance to win a virtual coffee break with France.