The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy culture vulture turned star of series like Malibu Country

Genoa City isn't ready for Jai Rodriguez.

The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy culture vulture turned star of series like Malibu Country and EastSiders is inbound for the fictionalized Wisconsin setting of The Young and the Restless. In a four-episode arc premiering Wednesday, Rodriguez will play Pietro, a vivacious and opinionated party planner hired to help Genoa City royalty Nikki Newman (Melody Thomas Scott) plot out her big birthday bash.

"When my character comes in, he's there to help plan this fabulous party, and some of his ideas are a little unorthodox, but therein lies the comedy," Rodriguez tells Entertainment Weekly ahead of Pietro's entrée into the long-running CBS soap. Reflecting on the snatches of scenes he's been able to preview from his upcoming arc, Rodriguez teases, "I was crying laughing, it's hilarious. I kept watching and I was like, 'This too good. I can't believe they let me do this on a soap.'"

If you were there for the rise of reality TV in the 2000s, then Rodriguez's face will be a familiar one. He advised countless hapless heteros on their journeys from frumpy to fab across five seasons of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, totaling 100 episodes. After the series' original run wrapped in 2007, Rodriguez says, "it was really hard to shed the Queer Eye thing." When he'd audition for scripted dramas and sitcoms, he'd often hear, "'You're just a reality star.'"

But it was the versatility Rodriguez was called on to display in his early experiences in the soap world that encouraged him to press on. "I had my first job as an actor on television in All My Children... I was this straight dad whose wife went into labor, and we had to stop through that town and deliver," he says.

Now, he calls himself "the guy who pops up on your favorite show. Whether it's Bones or The Rookie, kind of murdering folks, or your gay bestie in Uncoupled, or a random divorcée straight video gamer in Bros." Rodriguez jokes, "Most people watch something and they're like, 'You weren't in that.' I'm like, 'Go watch it again.' And they're like, 'Oh!'"

Soaps have been a remained a core part of Rodriguez's acting career, whether it's "Days of Our Lives here in L.A., I've done the Bold and the Beautiful, I've done One Life to Live in New York, All My Children... I love the soap medium. I think it's a real acting flex, because you get one take and you move on," he says. "People have gotten it down to a science where they're doing their prep, they're coming in, and they know their characters."

Rodriguez thinks that guest stars play a unique role in the soap machine, because "as a guest star, you really don't have much of a backstory. You know, in this scenario, I'm playing this very famous party planner. So the other characters have heard of me and might have their own personal backstories with me, but to come in with this role, it's a bit of a comedy role. That was what drew me to it when I read it, I was like, 'Oh, I am so in.'"

One of the biggest draws to the part of Pietro — and pleasures of playing him — was his close association with Scott, the queen of The Young and the Restless, who has played the powerful matriarch Nikki Newman since 1979. "My character, who is very established on his own, very successful, is enthralled by her, has been following her for years," Rodriguez explains. "So think of someone who's starting their own wellness brand and looking up to a Jennifer Garner or Gwyneth Paltrow with Goop. He sees her as this pinnacle of glamour and resilience and this trailblazing business mogul."

No one's better than Pietro at what he does, but Rodriguez teases, "When he meets her, I'm not sure he makes the best impression. It's funny. I mean, he's trying his best to be professional. Poor guy."

Rodriguez also calls his Young and the Restless arc a case of "life imitating art." As a prolific guest star on soaps, Rodriguez says there were "so many people in that cast that I actually knew," like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum and fellow former Bravolebrity Eileen Davidson. But as a self-professed "longtime soap fan," working with "titans of the soap world" like Scott, Peter Bergman, who's been playing Jack Abbott since 1989, and Christian LeBlanc, who's been playing Michael Baldwin since 1991, was a bit intimidating.