Colton Underwood, a star of “The Bachelor” and a former soccer participant, got here out as homosexual in an interview with Robin Roberts that aired Wednesday on “Good Morning America.”
He described 2020 as a 12 months of self-reflection, one which “probably made a lot of people look in the mirror and confront what they were running from or what they’ve been putting off in their lives.”
“I’ve ran from myself for a long time,” Mr. Underwood, 29, stated within the interview. “I’ve hated myself for a long time. And I’m gay. And I came to terms with that earlier this year and have been processing it, and the next step in all of this was sort of letting people know.”
He stated that coming to grasp his sexuality has been a “journey,” and now he’s “the happiest and healthiest” he’s felt in his life. He had reached a low in 2020, he stated, that led to ideas of self-harm and suicide.
“I got to a place where I didn’t think I was ever going to share this,” he stated. “I would have rather died than say, ‘I’m gay.’ And I think that was sort of my wake-up call.”
In his 2020 memoir, “The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV,” Mr. Underwood described being confronted by his mother and father about his sexuality as a young person.
“‘You know, Colt, we’d still love you and support you if you were gay,’” he recalled his mom telling him.
His father was extra confrontational. “He’d pulled up the history of recent Google searches, which included gay porn sites and a variety of questions: ‘Am I gay? How do you know if you’re gay? Why don’t I like having sex with my girlfriend?’” Mr. Underwood wrote within the ebook. “At first, I denied responsibility. Then I owned up to having been curious. He asked if I wanted to talk about it. I said no, explaining that I’d figured things out on my own.”
Mr. Underwood appeared on “The Bachelorette” in 2018 and shortly turned a fan favourite on the truth relationship present. But Becca Kufrin, the season’s star, anxious that he was unprepared for a lifelong dedication and eradicated him after their “hometown” date, the place she met his household. (The present’s producers had made Mr. Underwood’s sexual inexperience a serious plot level.)
He starred on “The Bachelor” in 2019, the place once more his virginity was a central theme. Near the tip of the season, because the stress of the present elevated, he stated he was “done” with filming and “jumped the fence” of a resort within the Algarve area of Portugal in an effort to flee the set.
After the present ended, Mr. Underwood and Cassie Randolph, 25, the front-runner of his season, started relationship. Ms. Randolph’s household helped him get well from Covid-19 in March, across the time his memoir was revealed.
The couple introduced their cut up in May 2020. In November, Ms. Randolph filed a restraining order towards Mr. Underwood, who she stated had positioned a monitoring system on her automobile. Viewers of his “Good Morning America” phase inferred that this was the non-public low to which he was alluding.
The “Bachelor” franchise had its first onscreen same-sex relationship in 2019 on “Bachelor in Paradise.” Demi Burnett, who appeared on Mr. Underwood’s season of “The Bachelor,” and Kristian Haggerty, who was flown out to the set midseason, ended up getting engaged. (They later broke it off.)
In its 20 years, the franchise has by no means featured an all-gay solid.
