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1. In a recent interview with Them, Reneé Rapp — who'd previously been outspoken about being bisexual — recalled coming out as lesbian on SNL. She was originally going to be called "our little bisexual intern" but asked them at the last minute if they could change the word bisexual to gay.
"I didn’t want to do it and be like, 'Oh my God, I’m not using the word bisexual and make bisexual people feel shitty.' I also didn’t want to be like, 'OK, I’m gay,' and have all the lesbians be like, 'Say you’re bisexual, then.' I felt so wrapped up and scared." She ended up calling a friend, who supported her in the decision. So, SNL cast member Bowen Yang introduced Reneé to the world as "our little lesbian intern."
2. On the Just for Variety podcast, Golda Rosheuvel revealed that she refused to hide her sexuality publicly, even after a lesbian director advised her to. "How come I can be out privately to my family, to my friends every day, but there's something about being professionally out and publicly out. We were talking about being out and proud and representation and whether I should say I was gay in interviews. And it was an absolute no."
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"Love is love. It doesn't matter whether it's between a man or a woman when you are an actor creating a character, investigating the human nature and human desire and human love. So yeah, it doesn't compute sometimes for me, the conversation that is being had over not coming out. It's strange."
3. On an episode of 4D With Demi Lovato, Emily Hampshire shared that the iconic wine scene in Schitt's Creek helped her come out as pan. "[David Rose] says, ultimately he likes the wine, not the label, and that he’s pansexual. I had never heard the word pansexual before," she said. "I’ve always considered myself super knowledgeable about LGBTQ+ stuff just because everybody in my life, my friends, are all mostly LGBTQ+ people, but I didn’t know this."
Even after filming the scene, it wasn't an immediate realization for Emily. "I said to Dan, 'This is so weird. What am I? Because I truly just fell in love with a person and where they were on the gender spectrum did not matter to me. And since then, it really doesn’t matter to me. I have to like the person. I’m really attracted to a person’s vibe.' He was like, 'You’re pansexual. Don’t you watch our show?'"
4. Last year, Ncuti Gatwa addressed his sexuality publicly for the first time in an interview with Elle UK, when he recalled meeting a Rwandan woman at Manchester Pride. "‘It just blew my mind that she was there. I can feel myself getting emotional just thinking about it. We were holding hands, and she said to me, 'I don’t really know why I’m here. I’m just here.' I told her, 'Honey, you don’t need to know. You absolutely. Do not. Need. To. Know. You’re here. Be proud of who you are.'"
"I had never met another queer Rwandan person before. I thought I was the only one in the world," he concluded.
5. During Pride Month of 2022, Rebel Wilson came out publicly with an Instagram post hard-launching her relationship with now-fiancé Ramona Agruma. "I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince… but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess 💗🌈💗#loveislove."
6. During an interview with British GQ, Sam Smith opened up about their journey to coming out as nonbinary. "Ever since I was a little boy, ever since I was a little human, I didn’t feel comfortable being a man really. I never really did. Some days, I’ve got my manly side, and some days, I’ve got my womanly side, but it’s when I’m in the middle of that switch that I get really, really depressed and sad. Because I don’t know who I am or where I am or what I’m doing, and I feel very misunderstood by myself. I realized that’s because I don’t fit into either."
"I was with my mum last night, and she said something so beautiful. 'I’m so relieved that you and me and your whole family have a way to explain this because it’s also been eating me up your whole life.' Because my mum could see it, and that it was a torture going on in my mind. But I’m also very scared because I’ve lived my life as a minority, and now it makes me scared because I’m trying to explain it to people around me, and they don’t understand. It feels like a new conversation, but I’m now learning it isn’t a new conversation, and it’s been around for so long," they concluded.
7. During a discussion with Demi Lovato for National Coming Out Day, Tan France said that he came out in stages: first to some close friends, then a couple members of his family. "And then I decided to join Queer Eye, and that meant that I was coming out very, very publicly."
"It was the first time many members of my own family were hearing it. At the time, I didn’t see it as brave. I was just so sick of not being myself, I just wanted to relieve myself of the burden of feeling so stifled by the secret. And so, it was more of a desperation on my own part to just rid myself of the shame and the guilt, because there is no shame and guilt in it."
8. During a One Stride, Many Journeys video, Laverne Cox said she had two coming outs. "I came out to my mom first as gay my sophomore year, and she freaked out. And then, when I came out to my mother as trans a few years later, it was after I started my medical transition, and she took that easier. This time, I was living in New York, I was supporting myself, and so she never said, 'I don’t want you in my life.' It was just she didn’t understand, and she had issues with the pronoun thing and the name change. It was just like, 'Girl, you gotta get this together.' And eventually, we did. I remember she sent me a plate that said, 'Number One Daughter,' and I just cried."
"When I finally accepted, when I started medical transition, and said I’m a woman and I’m trans, it was the most empowering thing ever. In the beginning of transitioning, I was so happy to be trans, and then, like a year in, I was like, 'I'm done with being trans. I wanna be stealth. I want to blend in. I’m a woman.' So, I had to get to a point where I was happy being recognizably trans, and that’s why I started the hashtag #TransIsBeautiful."
9. In 2020, Auli'i Cravalho announced her bisexuality by lip-syncing to a song in a TikTok. A year later, she told Entertainment Weekly she didn't intend the video to be a formal coming out — it was a spontaneous thing she did at 3 a.m. "The funniest part to me was that I had girlfriends in high school. I think girls are great, but I wouldn't think that it was necessary to come out."
10. Jesse Tyler Ferguson told People that he was caught stealing gay porn as a freshman in high school. "My mom and dad saw the nature of the material I was stealing, and that’s how I came out. I find it funny now, but at the time, it was incredibly traumatizing."
"Ironically, my father still had a hard time catching up," he continued. "I snuck some straight porn in there, too, so that threw him off just enough. ... I’m now married [to Justin Mikita], and my father, who had such a hard time accepting my sexuality, danced at my wedding very happily."
11. During a 2016 interview with Variety, Miley Cyrus said, "My whole life, I didn’t understand my own gender and my own sexuality. I always hated the word bisexual because that’s even putting me in a box. I don’t ever think about someone being a boy or someone being a girl. ... I grew up in a very religious Southern family. The universe has always given me the power to know I’ll be okay. Even at that time, when my parents didn’t understand, I just felt that one day they are going to understand."
"On The Voice, this young girl started crying when she left because I’m the reason she came out. My mom started crying. She was like, 'I’m so sorry about the way I was when you were that age and coming out.' She never understood me until she saw that girl who couldn’t be herself. It was very cool," she concluded.
12. In the It Got Better docuseries, Raven-Symoné said that being a child star affected the way she viewed coming out. "I never thought I would come out because my personal life didn't matter. It only mattered what could be sold as part of the Raven-Symoné brand."
She knew she was gay by the age of 12 but tried to force herself to like boys. Then, she went to college. "I felt good. I had support there beyond belief, and that was the first time I felt like I didn't have to have a beard. I didn't have to have a man standing beside me because I [was] in love with a girl." After coming out to her parents and then the public, she felt lighter. "I felt like I could go out and not have to put on 17 different hats to be myself."
13. Although Sara Ramirez played bisexual doctor Callie Torres in Grey's Anatomy, "I didn't know if I was ready to come out publicly," they told People. But the continued violence against queer folks, including the 2016 Pulse shooting in Orlando, pushed them to speak out.
"During a movie night at my house one night, I pressed pause, and then I shared my truth with the room, and I waited because I wasn't sure what to expect," they recalled. "But everyone was very supportive and very happy for me. The reaction was something like, 'Huh, cool. Can we go back to the movie now?'"
14. Sarah Paulson told Notofu that she accidentally outed herself in 2005, back when she was dating Cherry Jones. "She won a Tony Award, I kissed her, and all of a sudden, I was outed. I didn't really think about it in that way at the time — I was just doing what one would do when a person they love has just won a big fat acting prize. What am I gonna do, pat her on the back and say, 'Good job, dude?' It didn't occur to me to do anything but what I did."
15. During a 2019 interview with Time magazine, Lil Nas X said he was inspired to come out by Pride Month. "I never would have done that if I wasn’t in a way pushed by the universe," he says. "In June, I’m seeing Pride flags everywhere and seeing couples holding hands — little stuff like that." He shared that he came out to his father and sister early in June before coming out on Twitter several weeks later.
16. In 2020, Demi Lovato recalled coming out on the Radio Andy SiriusXM show. "After everything was done, I was like, shaking and crying, and I just felt overwhelmed, but I have such incredible parents. They were so supportive. My dad was like, 'Yeah, obviously.' And I was like, 'Oh, okay Dad.'"
"My mom was the one that I was like, super nervous about, but she was just like, 'I just want you to be happy,'" Demi recalled. "That was so beautiful and amazing, and like I said, I'm so grateful."
17. Hayley Kiyoko publicly came out with her iconic 2015 song, "Girls Like Girls," but she was uncertain about the response she'd get. She told Them, "I was so nervous because so many outlets didn't want to premiere it because it felt too — 'explicit' was a word that they used, even though it's just queer love. I was like, 'Is anyone going to watch this video? Is anyone gonna relate to it?'"
Though she'd already come out to her loved ones, she'd never used she/her pronouns for a love interest in a song before. "I think once you come out yourself as an artist, you're really allowing yourself to be your true authentic self because I was lying to myself for a long time as I was writing music. And I was so, so surprised to find my community once I released 'Girls Like Girls.'"
18. In 2016, Hunter Schafer and her parents spoke to North Carolina Public Radio – WUNC. The actor, who'd previously come out as gay to her family, said, "It was in seventh grade that I came to terms with the idea that maybe I wasn’t a boy." She approached her parents twice, insisting she was trans, before the message got through.
Hunter's dad recalled that she attended a fashion camp. "Hunter came up to me the morning before the fashion show and said, 'Dad, do you mind if I wear heels?' Inside, everything in me was going no, no, no. But outside, I said, 'Yes, you can.' I think that’s when everything became real. And I thought, you know, the ideas I’ve had in my head of raising a son, in a sense, I’m putting those away and have grief in saying goodbye to that idea, but joy in the sense of Hunter being birthed into who she was created to be."
19. In Bustle's 2018 Queer Eye coming out stories video, Jonathan Van Ness said, "I am who I am, and I always had to be who I was. By the time I was 8 or 9, I got tired of saying no, so I just starting saying, 'Yes, I am gay,' when everyone would ask 17 times a day."
A year later, they came out as nonbinary during an interview with Out. "I just am either like gender-bendy or nonconform-y or nonbinary, and somedays, I feel like a boy, and somedays, I feel like a girl. I didn’t think I was allowed to be nonconforming or genderqueer or nonbinary — I was just always, like, 'a gay man' because that’s just the label I thought I had to be."
20. During an interview on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Dan Levy shared that he came out when he was about 18. Over lunch, his mom asked him if he was gay, and he said yes. "My mom and I have a very close relationship in that sense, and it almost felt like she knew that I was ready," he said. His dad, Eugene Levy, replied, "Oh no, we knew. For the longest time. But we were waiting. And then, mom couldn't wait any longer."
21. After coming out as a lesbian, Kehlani made a TikTok video recalling how it went when she told her family and friends. "I'm like, 'Guys, I finally know that I'm gay — like, I'm gay gay,' and they're like, 'We know. Duh, stupid. Duh.'"
She joked that she would have preferred her family to be shocked and congratulate her, but instead, they said, "You're the only one that didn't fucking know. The fucking closet was glass."
22. In 2018, Keiynan Lonsdale told People, "There were rumors going on around the dance world back home. It was breaking my heart — I was going wild. I was lying and lying and lying, doing everything I could to hold on to my secret." He said that he had to come to terms with his own sexuality before he was comfortable enough to tell other people. "It felt like people were deciding for me."
After a deep conversation with his best friend, he decided to address the rumors at a party. "I said, 'I’m not straight. I don’t really label myself as anything. I have been in love with guys, and I have been in love with girls. That's me.'"
23. In 2021, JoJo Siwa shared several social media posts that sparked speculation before she posted a pic wearing a shirt that said: "Best. Gay. Cousin. Ever." In an Instagram Live, JoJo Siwa said, "My mom said she's known for the last two years. She's like, 'I just know with you!' Around two years ago, she was like, 'I don't think that you only like boys, and that's totally OK.'"
"Like my dad said, love is universal," JoJo continued. "You guys can love whoever you want to love, and you guys can do in life whatever you want to do. You can dream a dream, and you can make that dream come true, no matter what. Just be happy. Happiness is sometimes really hard, and if something makes you happy, enjoy it."
24. During a 2012 interview with GQ, Frank Ocean shared how he felt after coming out in a moving letter on Tumblr. "The night I posted it, I cried like a fucking baby. It was like all the frequency just clicked to a change in my head. All the receptors were now receiving a different signal, and I was happy. I hadn't been happy in so long. I've been sad again since, but it's a totally different take on sad. There's just some magic in truth and honesty and openness."
25. In an essay written for Oprah Daily, Andy Cohen shared that he first came out to friends. Later, his mom found a letter he wrote. "I'd originally written it in my journal, when I realized I’d have to come out eventually, and it said everything I felt I needed to say; it was a long, freeing, kind of purge of self-expression in which I was just explaining who I was, which I often used to tell my friends. After my mom found it, I came out to her — and she later wound up getting involved in an AIDS charity in St. Louis because she wanted to get involved in my community. The rest is history."
26. In 2018, Tessa Thompson publicly came out during an interview with Porter magazine. "I can take things for granted because of my family — it’s so free, and you can be anything that you want to be. I’m attracted to men and also to women. If I bring a woman home, [or] a man, we don’t even have to have the discussion."
27. On an episode of The Talk, Sara Gilbert shared that she first came out to her Roseanne costar, Johnny Galecki. "I thought he was super cute, and I had a total crush on him. And we started dating, and he would come over, and we would, like, make out, and then I would start to get depressed. Johnny felt badly, I think, and started to take it personally and didn't understand what was going on. So, I eventually told him I thought it was about my sexuality, and he was super sweet about it."
28. During Yahoo's Pride Evolution event, Margaret Cho said she initially came out as a lesbian and wore "long, denim shorts and a messenger bag and a bike chain and big boots." She continued, "And I wouldn't stop coming out. People were like, could you please stop coming out?" But she eventually realized she wanted to have diverse experiences. "So then I kind of came out as straight, and then I came out as bi. So now I'm a fruit."
29. And finally, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez discussed her transition in a 2016 interview with Playbill. She recalled her fear of informing her talent agency, saying, "I was really scared. I didn’t know what they were going to think. To be quite honest, I was afraid that they would drop me, and I wouldn’t have had anyone to represent me, and I would be struggling again, but fortunately, after I sent the email, they said, 'What? Are you kidding me? We love you.' And they said, 'It doesn’t matter. We still love you, and we don’t care.'"
She said that her family and friends showered her in support, too. "My mom is my biggest cheerleader."
Do you have a coming out story you'd like to share? LMK in the comments below!
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