Jonathan Van Ness heads to Rialto stage in Tucson homecoming

”I was like, this is the best thing I've ever tasted,” they recalled.

That’s why Beyond Bread could very well be Van Ness’s first stop when they pull into Tucson for their first Tucson stand-up comedy show at Rialto Theatre.

Van Ness, commonly referred to by their initials JVN, attended the U of A just one semester before dropping out and turning to a career in hairstyling. In their 2019 memoir “Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love,” Van Ness, who was on a partial U of A cheerleading scholarship, recounted how they blew the $200 monthly allowance their parents gave them and turned to sex work to support their drug habit and make ends meet.

“I really crashed and burned there, and it was a really emotionally, incredibly difficult time for me. But it was also a time where I learned how to make friends and I learned how resilient I was,” Van Ness said during a phone call to talk about their “Hot & Healed Comedy Tour” coming to Rialto on Sunday, Oct. 11.

“It really is like very full circle for me. I feel like my 17-year-old self is even more excited that I get to come back and do something that was just completely outside of my realm of possibility at the time.”

Van Ness’s journey from college burnout to starring for 10 years on Netflix’s pop culture phenomenon “Queer Eye” started at their childhood home in Quincy, Illinois, growing up in a family of journalists with roots going back six generations.

Van Ness was openly gay throughout their life, which, according to their memoirs, led to bullying and self-destructive behaviors, including drug use and promiscuity, often with older men they met online.

But growing up, their father talked about his time at the U of A, where he earned a degree in either marketing or advertising. They had visited Tucson once, and Van Ness recalled the lasting impression of seeing the mountains and the desert for the first time.

“I'm like from a cornfield, so I just I fell in love right away,” they recalled. “I think growing up as a very, you know, flamboyant, queer kid in the Midwest, I was like, what's the farthest possible place I can get away from my hometown that my family will like let me go to?”

When Van Ness left Tucson, they went to Minneapolis to train as a hairstylist before starting their career in Scottsdale. Van Ness spent five years in Arizona before moving to Los Angeles.

A client in California opened the door for Van Ness’s entertainment career, inviting them to perform an episode for the Funny Or Die comedy website based on the “Game of Thrones.” “Gay of Thrones,” in which Van Ness and guests would perform campy recaps of the popular HBO series, became a web series that earned Van Ness a primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series. It also led to their weekly podcast “Getting Curious With Jonathan Van Ness,” which they just recently paused so they could focus on their stand-up career and growing their namesake hair product line.

The web series also introduced them to their comedy queen, Margaret Cho.

“She hit us up on Twitter and was like, ‘I love this Game of Thrones. How do I get in the chair?’ And I couldn't believe it,” Van Ness said. “She was like my childhood icon of comedians. Margaret Cho was my gateway drug into stand-up comedy.”

Cho was the first to suggest Van Ness was destined for stand-up comedy. They responded that they were “meant to be your hairdresser,” which Van Ness did for a few years to put off getting on stage.

A couple of years later, Van Ness tiptoed into standup, doing open mic nights and writing little bits here and there.

When cast in 2018 as the grooming expert on Netflix’s “Queer Eye” — a reboot of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” that ran for five seasons on Bravo, from 2003-07 — everything changed.

“That opened so many doors for me in standup that I was able to start really getting to go do the improv and Caroline's and some really iconic comedy venues,” they said. ”I guess long story short, it really was Margaret Cho that inspired me both as a kid and as an adult to pursue a career in comedy, and I'm so happy she did.”

Their show Sunday will delve into turning dark moments of our lives into life lessons on how to talk to yourself in a way that builds you up instead of tearing you down, and how to make light of the dark.

They open the show telling the audience: “I am feeling hot, and I think I'm healed. It's not an official prognosis, you know. My therapist says that healing is a journey, not a destination, and I should hope so, as we find ourselves in the second Trump administration.”

“I just gave you a little spoiler,” they said, adding that the show focuses not on things happening to us but how we can make things happen for us.

“How can we laugh through life's sadnesses, or at least give ourselves the permission to laugh and love ourselves through the hard stuff,” Van Ness said. “And that's really what the show is about, but in a very joyful, playful way.”

Being able to bring the show to Tucson is especially poignant for Van Ness, who admitted they never could have imagined their 17-year-old self would become who they are today, 22 years later.

“I am so proud of that, and I think especially in Tucson … I really have such a huge place in my heart,” they said. “I hopefully can teach people to find, even in their really dark seasons of their life, that there is still light there and there is still joy. You just have to look for it a little bit harder, but I really think that's what comedy is," Van Ness said.

"And the show is very light and it's very fun and it's very queer joy and queer centric and so I think if you're a girl gay or a they, you're gonna love it and I think your husband if you have like a husband or a boyfriend who is heterosexual or bisexual — I don't want to limit your life — but I think your heterosexual boyfriends and husbands will be very enlightened from a very fun night."

Van Ness goes on stage at the Rialto, 318 E. Congress St., at 8 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $49-$92.80 through rialtotheatre.com.