How Danny Pellegrino Survived Gay Ghosts, Bravolebrities, and the Holidays

It can be quite fun to be haunted by a gay ghost. Danny Pellegrino knows.

“A gay man who died in the 1980s has been haunting me on Halloween my entire adult life,” Pellegrino, an author who also hosts the wildly popular Everything Iconic pop culture podcast, writes in his new book, The Jolliest Bunch: Unhinged Holiday Stories. “There, I said it! That’s right, my name is Danny Pellegrino, and I have a homosexual ghost chasing me around on the spookiest holiday.”

How did Pellegrino know that these paranormal encounters were with a friend of Dorothy, somehow stuck between our realm and somewhere over the rainbow?

The first sign was in 2002 when, as a teenager, he was home on Halloween night passing out candy and watching holiday episodes of Roseanne. The doorbell rang far too late for trick-or-treaters. When he opened the door, no one was there, but a VHS tape of 9 to 5 had been left on the stoop. Starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton, the 1980 film boasted “quite possibly the most gay-friendly cast ever assembled,” Pellegrino writes. For the then-closeted teen, it was a foundational gift—a cinematic queer education—delivered from the beyond.

During a spooky-season visit to an abandoned asylum his sophomore year of college, Pellegrino noticed scribblings on a desk chair that only he could see: “If you can’t say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me,” a famous quote from the film Steel Magnolias. Years later, he kept seeing apparitions of a man dressed as Jennifer Beals from Flashdance at a costume party. A decade after, while trick-or-treating with his niece and nephew, he kept hearing someone whisper the phrase, “Snap out of it!” from Moonstruck in his ear; no one else in his family heard of it.

Then during a vacation in Maui, people kept getting confused when Pellegrino repeatedly sang a duet of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross’s “Endless Love” with a man named Fred. There was no man named Fred with them—or any man at all. “My best guess is that [Fred] passed away in the [’80s] and his unfinished business is teaching younger homosexuals about the pertinent stuff, knowing that as a ’90s kid, I am not as familiar with the classics of the decade I was born,” Pellegrino writes. “I’m grateful to Fred for acting as my spirit guide and showing me a good time, ensuring I am familiar with the queens who came before my time.”

When Pellegrino and I connect over Zoom, it’s been years since Fred had paid a visit. But he’s still in the holiday spirit. As in… all the holidays.

A sequel of sorts to last year’s bestseller How Do I Un-Remember This?, The Jolliest Bunch is a series of essays recounting formative experiences surrounding Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas—some poignant, some disastrous, and most both of them combined. “I’m already someone who cries a lot,” Pellegrino tells Obsessed, about what it’s like having these stories out in the world. “There’s also this extra mindfuck of: It’s a sort of holiday, Christmas-themed book, I’m talking about it in October, and I was writing throughout the summer months. My brain and my emotions are all out of balance.”

That’s understandable; it’s a big week for Pellegrino. Not only is he on a nationwide tour to promote The Jolliest Bunch, but it’s witching season for two of his greatest interests: being extra over a holiday, and obsessing over Bravo.

A lynchpin to the success of Everything Iconic has been Pellegrino’s opinions on the various Real Housewives franchises. Bravo viewers worship his takes as some kind of reality-television Bible. Accruing an impressive roster of interview guests over the years, ranging from Andy Cohen and countless Housewives to Kelly Ripa and Cameron Diaz, he’s graduated from Bravo’s biggest fan to bona fide expert and celebrity in his own right. He’s appeared multiple times on Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live talk show and will be moderating two panels at this weekend’s BravoCon fan experience in Las Vegas, with the casts of The Real Housewives of Miami and The Real Housewives of Orange County.

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“I’m a little scared to meet Shannon Beador in person,” he says, referencing the currently embattled RHOC cast member. Because of the sensitivity surrounding her DUI arrest? “No, because I’m not always the nicest when it comes to Shannon on my show,” he laughs. The perils of being a notable podcaster.

Far scarier than the talent, I warn him, are the fans. At the last BravoCon held at New York City’s Javits Center, they were—there’s no other way to put it—positively feral. There was an actual stampede of patrons breaching barricades to get into the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills panel after the hall filled up. Think the wildebeest scene in The Lion King, with Lisa Rinna, who the same fans then loudly booed, as Mufasa. People would heckle the Bravolebs from the audience when they didn’t like their answers to questions. When the bar line got too long, there was a palpable fear of an uprising.

Imagine all of that… but now in Las Vegas. “I know some people hate Las Vegas, but I love it. I’m excited for the chaos of it all,” Pellegrino says. After all, the same enthusiasm for all things Bravo that led to something as huge as BravoCon being planned also contributed to Everything Iconic being a destination for the network’s devotees. What could be more fun for those fans than seeing those Bravo stars in person, even if the opportunity combined with a few pinot grigios incites a person’s wilder side?

“My biggest fantasy is to play blackjack with Countess Luann [de Lesseps],” he says. “The idea that that could be a possibility, to run into these people at the blackjack table in the middle of the night, is amazing.” One can actually imagine the Real Housewives of New York and Welcome to Crappie Lake star parked at a Sex and the City slot machine, chain smoking and going for the jackpot. “I can’t think of anything greater,” Pellegrino says, practically cooing.

But before braving the ghouls, goblins, and DJ James Kennedy stans at BravoCon, there’s actual Halloween to weather first.

As already established, Halloween ranks among Pellegrino’s favorite times of the year. If you’ve read How Do I Un-Remember This? or The Jolliest Bunch, you’ll know that he is an advocate for unabashed seasonal indulgence. An IV drip infusion of pumpkin spice would not be sufficient. His particular affinity is for pop culture-themed costumes—like every respectable gay millennial man, gleeful TV and film references are the roots from which every meaningful life experience blooms. In 2015, for example, he donned a white bucket hat, a luxurious cream ensemble, and a pancake of morbid face paint to dress as a zombie version of Diane Keaton from the Nora Ephron film Something’s Gotta Give.

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That year, Chipotle was giving away free burritos to anyone who showed up in costume. “I just remember trying to explain to the person making the burrito that I was zombie Diane Keaton from Something’s Gotta Give. I just seemed crazy,” he says. “And it was still daytime out!”

Even the promotional photos for The Jolliest Bunch lean into Pellegrino’s ethos: There is no such thing as a pop-culture reference that is too specific, too “gay,” or too embarrassing. Why waste time being embarrassed about things in your life that bring you joy? In other words, when given the opportunity to be photographed by a professional on behalf of a book about your life, you should absolutely insist that he take shots of you posing with pumpkins just like Sigourney Weaver did in the 1980s—and then have your publicist provide them to an editor to publish in The Daily Beast’s Obsessed.

The providence of this Sigourney Weaver photoshoot is a mystery, as is its popularity; I can only explain that, among Extremely Online people (gay men on Twitter) of a certain age (over 30), these photos are canon, as indelible as the Mona Lisa—or, I guess, Ellen’s Oscars selfie.

“I was trying to explain to the photographer, this brilliant guy, Brian, what these Sigourney Weaver photos are, and I sounded crazy because I don’t recall them being from anything,” Pellegrino says. “They just sort of wound up on the internet one day. And so I’m like, ‘Oh, you know, those pictures of Sigourney Weaver and the pumpkin…’ He had no idea what I was talking about.”

Still, the photos are emblematic of a hard-learned life lesson, one that Pellegrino spent decades struggling to understand and the value of which leaps from the page in his books: Imagine what would happen if, instead of extinguishing a spark of happiness out of insecurity or fear, you let it blaze. (Of course, do so safely and metaphorically. Because of a love for elaborate holiday-themed tablescapes, a few rogue candles, and a small kitchen fire, Pellegrino is now well-versed as to which items in Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Home decor collection are and are not flammable.)

“If a twinkle light makes you happy, or Mariah Carey's Christmas album, or Kelly Clarkson’s album—whatever—put it on whenever you want and feel good about it,” Pellegrino says. Embracing a holiday spirit sounds breezy when it’s put that way, but the power of The Jolliest Bunch is in its acknowledgement of the hardships, the pain, and the melancholy that people can feel over the holidays—and how that can both fuel and hinder the expected merriment.

Pellegrino’s books echo his hosting style on Everything Iconic, where he goes in-depth on the pop-culture he’s obsessed with now (chiefly: Bravo) and from his past (all things Rosie O’Donnell and Jessica Simpson). Both the podcast and the books are testaments to the power of opening old wounds and celebrating past shame-filled moments, because those personal confessions are what connect us. They’re also jubilant, an ode to family, growth, and JC Chasez, who is the first person thanked in The Jolliest Bunch’s acknowledgments, ahead of Pellegrino’s editor, parents, siblings, and partner.

His are very specific stories about what it was like to grow up in suburban Ohio, first unaware that it might be strange for a young boy to bring a VHS tape of Stepmom on all vacations and force his family to repeatedly watch it, then scared of the judgment he might receive for vocalizing that things that are “for girls” are the exact pop culture that he liked. He writes about coming to terms with his sexuality, learning to let himself be confident as a gay man, and then witnessing his personality thrive once he found the right emotional prescription to see how the world could be more vivid and vibrant when all of it—his identity and his love for pairing Lacey Chabert’s Hallmark Christmas movies with some bed wine—were unleashed.

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Anecdotally, as a gay man of similar age and upbringing, it’s uncanny and surreal how many of his stories mirror my own, as well as those of many other friends and colleagues I’ve spoken to. Many are different, too. But they’re united in an experience of coming to terms, coming to joy, and somewhere along the line purchasing the Rosie O’Donnell Barbie doll off eBay. (Mine was procured at an antique store near Real Housewives of New York star Dorinda Medley’s legendary Bluestone Manor home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It all goes back to Bravo.)

“I want the stories to be universal, but I hope that gay people can read it and maybe pick up on things that other people might not get,” Pellegrino says. “I wanted to explore those things, of what it feels like to be gay around the holiday season.” So grab the nearest pumpkin and go full Sigourney.

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