Join Queer Kentucky for their latest print edition featuring original stories, gorgeous photography, and exclusive interviews with Zack Wickham of Bravo’s The Valley, award-winning singer S.G. Goodman, and Chappell Roan’s makeup artist Andrew Dahling.

FROM GROWING UP IN THE PROGRESSIVE HEART OF KENTUCKY TO SHINING A LIGHT ON LGBTQ+ STORIES IN BRAVO’S THE VALLEY

As Zack Wickham, star of Bravo’s hit show The Valley, glides into a photography studio located on Whiskey Row in Downtown Louisville, he’s holding his clothes in one hand, offering hugs with the other, and rattling off his favorite facts about his favorite city to his boyfriend, Benji.

“Did you know Louisville produces more disco balls than anywhere else in the world? Or that Louisville has the best tap water in the country?”

For those of you not in the Bravo universe, I’m happy to be your tour guide. Wickham stars in The Valley, a breakout hit reality show that first aired in 2024 as a spinoff to Vanderpump Rules, aka VPR. VPR was launched in 2013 as a sneak peek into the antics of service industry staff (raise your hand if you’ve ever worked at a restaurant and fucked a coworker) and quickly became one of the network’s top shows. While the show lacked any real diversity, we lived for our bisexual sandwich shop queen Ariana Maddix and enjoyed every second of one Tom in a dress crying over another Tom in a dress, who is clearly trying to take a shit in private.

Photo by Ryan Grant

But as it happens in life, friend groups shift. People break up, couple up, move to the suburbs, and spit out kids. The Valley was launched off of this change, bringing back former VPR stars Jax Taylor and Kentucky native, Brittany Cartwright, along with their real-life friend group, which of course includes Cartwright’s best friend of fifteen years, Zack Wickham.

“I did Vanderpump Rules for years and years where I was the new person,” Cartwright said. “And I came to a new show where I didn’t know anybody, and luckily they were all great to me, but it can be very intimidating. So to start off with The Valley, I knew like 1000% that Zack had to be on the show with me. He has been one of my best friends for over 15 years now. And it wouldn’t be my real life or our friend group’s real life if he wasn’t a huge part of that.”

Unlike most Hollywood stars, Wickham didn’t leave for Los Angeles until he was older. “I had a full adult life before moving to LA at 29, which feels late to make such a big leap,” he says.

In Louisville, Wickham was deeply entrenched in the LGBTQ+ community: interning for Fairness Campaign Executive Director Chris Hartman, obtaining his master’s at Bellarmine University, and enjoying the world-class drag production that beloved LGBTQ+ club, The Connection (rest in peace), brought to the city.

Photo by Ryan Grant

“There was so much stuff like that that I take pride in. I kind of grew up on the best of the best of the LGBT community” he says. “Every time I come back, I get to relive all those memories in a city that’s changed in all the right ways but stayed true to itself where it matters.”

Moving from Louisville to LA created quite the culture shock for the Trinity High graduate and his start was a little rocky.

“My first year in LA, I spent $3,000 on parking tickets and towing fees. It’s such a typical ‘I-just-moved-to-LA’ story,’” Wickham laughs. “Luckily I did have Brittany, who I knew before she was on Vanderpump Rules. Then when I started hanging out with her, that group became my friend group, and I luckily was integrated very fast into that, so that I didn’t have to worry about finding friends.”

But, as many of us can relate, the pandemic changed a lot of that. During this time, Wickham was separated from Cartwright and their shared friend group, many of them protecting new and immunocompromised family members. This provided an opportunity for him to build a foundation of LGBTQ+ friends and support that he was missing in LA.

“Even on The Valley,” Wickham says, “it’s all about families and heteronormativity. And that’s great. You can have friends and they can understand to a degree of stuff, but they’ll never know what you as a gay man goes through or as a Queer person goes through and so it’s really nice to have that to fall back on. And I think when my straight friends were busy with a lot of stuff I really realized how important having that community is because I had it in Louisville. And when I moved it was harder to find.”

photo by Ryan Grant

For season two of The Valley, Wickham is excited to share more of his life. During season two, cameras will now be following Wickham on his own storylines, showing glimpses of his happy relationship with boyfriend Benji, while also offering a peek into the life of somebody not at the same financial level as their friends.

“Being that I’m the poorest on the cast, you get to really see my life,” he says with a laugh “And I think it’s a view that you don’t get with some of the other people because I’m struggling still.”

He and his boyfriend won’t be the only healthy, happy LGBTQ+ couple on the show—his close friend Jasmine Goode, recently engaged to Melissa Marie, will also be more heavily shown in season two. Goode says, there haven’t really been many reality shows that showcase the lives of Queer people and are excited to put Queer love front and center.

Photo by Ryan Grant

“So to be on a platform where they’re allowing that, and they show our lives authentically, it’s beautiful,” she says “And I’m very thankful and I’m glad to do it with one of my best friends. Me and Zack have been friends for years, we used to live together. So now that we, you know, we used to live together, now we’re on a show together, it’s just wild. I love it.”

Wickham said he is counting down the days to the premiere of season two of The Valley which premiers in April on Bravo and will be streaming the next day on Peacock.

“Well, I’ll just say that I feel like every other or every third episode is almost like a finale. That’s how crazy it is. There’s always a cliffhanger, and every episode will probably have a cliffhanger, and every third episode will be, like, finale-level drama, because we are that intense right now. We’ve just gone through it.”