Kristen Stewart shares touching reason she came out on SNL

Kristen Stewart has said she came out on Saturday Night Live to “unlock other people’s doors” and make the world a “more open and accepting place”.

The Twilight star came out during the opening monologue in her debut on the US sketch comedy show in 2017 exclaiming “I’m so gay” after joking about President Trump’s previous interest in her relationship with Robert Pattinson. Stewart married Dylan Meyer in 2025.

Speaking to the ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis programme this week, the director of The Chronology of Water went into why she chose that moment to publicly address her sexuality.

“It was less about sharing the details of my relationship and more so acknowledging that there are people that don’t get full access to being alive because they’re hiding,” Stewart said. The Spencer star went on to say she’d had people in her life tell her: “Your career would go better if you didn’t go outside holding your girlfriend’s hand,” which was a perspective she didn’t approve of.

“I was like, ‘So you want me to live a partial life? And you want me to uphold and perpetuate and sustain a system that excludes people?’ And I just can’t do that,” she said. The actress and director also claimed it was “very obvious who I was dating” in reference to model Stella Maxwell adding: “I don’t need to caption this for you.”

Well aware of the distinct lack of privacy Hollywood stars have, Stewart also didn’t want to “commodify those details” of her life. “I didn’t want to be part of a comic book,” she continued. “But what I didn’t want to do was hide from the world we live in. I want to define it, I want to make it a more open and accepting place. And so I thought it was necessary for me to [come out] – I was already holding my girlfriend’s hand in public.”

Finally she added: “It felt like a statement that just might unlock other people’s doors.”

Stewart recently said she is unlikely to stay living in the US if Trump follows through with his “terrifying” threats to impose a 100 per cent tariff on films made outside of the US.

The Chronology of Water – a biographical drama that follows Olympic hopeful Lidia Yuknavitch who suffered a traumatic childhood – was shot in Latvia.

“I can’t work freely there,” Stewart told The Times. “But I don’t want to give up completely. I’d like to make movies in Europe and then shove them down the throat of the American people.”

The actress, who is bisexual and got married to screenwriter Dylan Meyer in 2025, criticised Trump’s “terrifying” threats to impose a 100 per cent tariff on films made outside of the US. 

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