- Coming out has changed my life
in infinite amount of ways.
On one hand, nothing's changed, but on the other hand,
everything's changed.
I don't know how that makes sense but to me it does.
(electronic music)
I was a super sensitive kid, yeah.
I always didn't wanna bother other people.
That was the main thing, I just didn't want my presence
to be annoying or boring or,
I just didn't wanna muck up anyone else's thing.
I already stood out because my brothers and sisters
from my mom's side looked Caucasian,
then I was like the darkest one and people were always
like from the outside would always assume that
we weren't even related, so I always felt off to the side
by the outside sort of world.
There weren't that many other black kids in Australia
that I grew up with.
Race definitely had a lot to do with me feeling different
and then also the fact that I danced
and the other boys in school didn't dance,
so then you get sort of teased about that.
One of my sisters, she would always go and like,
put them in their place (chuckles).
So she would kinda take down the bullies for me
which is good.
(electronic music)
This girl at school who I had a crush on,
her name was Shelly.
I think I was 12.
We were best friends and was like, I kept trying to
ask her out, she kept saying no and I was like, "Why?"
Like I keep trying to say we can't be together,
we're just going to be friends.
I was like, "Why?"
She's like, "'Cause you're gay, you're gonna be gay."
And I was like, "What?
"But I like you, like I like you a lot."
And she's like, "Oh I just know it."
I know I get told I'm feminine and my voice is high,
and she's like, "No, no, no, you're gonna be gay."
I was like, "Oh, am I?
"Oh, okay," and then that's when I started
just questioning it because you have other people saying,
that's what you are.
I felt kind of crappy because I was like,
I really like you, and I didn't have any feelings for guys.
But again I only had feelings for girls
up until I was like 19.
When I was 19 was when I had my first big crush for a guy
and that's when I was like, oh.
Can't really deny these feelings.
(electronic music)
I came out to my mom when I was 21.
I came out to her because my heart had just been broken
so I called her and it was a first heartbreak,
so it wasn't like a pretty nice experience,
but she drove up to me and we just had the longest chat,
we spoke about everything, and she knew that I was
going through something for a few months
but she didn't know.
We've always been best friends and I actually think
since being out to her, we became much closer.
Instead of her saying, "What's up, what's wrong?"
and me never being able to give a response, being like,
"You don't understand, you never understand."
And then (chuckles), 'cause that's what it was like,
and then there's this wall between you.
I definitely had people whether it was professional
or personally in my life tell me that it would be an issue,
a potential issue if I was to come out,
because maybe audiences wouldn't know how to take me
as an actor and there were certain people who said,
you're about to start a superhero show, and you know,
it just could be a thing.
And then I found out actually very shortly after that
that Ezra Miller who was playing The Flash in the movie,
was openly queer and I was like, what a perfect example,
no, I can just be myself, and I wasn't planning on
coming out at the time but it gave me a lot of
confidence to know whenever I was ready,
that's not a problem, I've got someone right there
who's doing them so unapologetically.
And at that point, I was strong enough to say
to those people to shut up.
'Cause I knew I was still struggling with it,
but I was aware enough to say this is my struggle.
You could all go away (chuckles).
Please.
(electronic music)
It was definitely an interesting feeling going into
Love, Simon and filming it and knowing that
it was still something in terms of my sexuality
that I wasn't putting out to the public
and even the costume crew on set.
It's just there's so many different levels of
coming out and I felt like because so much of
my life was constantly meeting new people
and starting new jobs and those are the places
where I wasn't being completely truthful.
Yeah I still felt very, very much in the closet
and I guess I was then inspired by the storyline
and the fact that there was so much support on set
for these characters.
It made me go, well, there's nothing to be afraid of,
I have to take this step for myself.
(electro-pop music)
Since coming out, my creativity's been awesome.
I'm able to come up with more ideas that are more organic
and come from a cooler space and I get to use
the things that I was sort of struggling with before
and how I'm no longer in that space,
and actually use that in my creativity,
rather than my sexuality or anything sort of
being in the way of what I can create,
now it's just another tool in expressing myself.
I feel like I granted myself absolute freedom.
We're all in different scenarios and everyone has a story,
everyone has suffered, everyone is suffering
in so many different ways.
And there are so many things coming at us.
The world is so noisy, it's so chaotic,
but I realized there were so many things
that I could control.
I could control if I'm wearing fluffy ears right now,
or if I'm going to say, oh I shouldn't do that,
I'm gonna interview people (mumbles) actually look cool,
I'm an adult, what am I doing?
The only thing that would stop me is if I was
worrying about what other people thought.
So once I was free from what other people think about me,
it made me happy.
♪ If you wanna kiss the boy ♪
♪ Then you better kiss the boy right now ♪