Neil Patrick Harris felt pressure to come out as ‘target’ of gossip bloggers
Neil Patrick Harris. (Getty/Jamie McCarthy)
Neil Patrick Harris has opened up about his experience of feeling pressured to come out in 2006 after his sexuality had become the “target” of celebrity bloggers like Perez Hilton.
Harris shared what he went through during a 12 August episode of the podcast Great Company with Jamie Laing.
When asked if deciding to publicly come out as gay was a tough moment, he said it was more of an “evitability”. Harris had started dating his now-husband David Burtka when he auditioned for How I Met Your Mother, and everyone on the show knew they were a couple.
“That was at a time when there were bloggers on the internet and that you would go to read the salacious, you know, ‘Try to guess who this actor is that’s gay and in the closet,’ kind of comment,” he said.
He went on to share that there was a “fear that [he] would be the next target on that.”
“David and I would go to movie premieres together, but I would walk the carpet and he would go around the other side of the photographers because we weren’t a couple [to the public],” he said.
“We could justify it and say that’s our private life, which it was, and we don’t need to sort of parade stuff around and ask too many questions. We’re here for work, I have a career, so does he, which was all very true, but intrinsically makes David feel potentially less than, if I’m getting to walk a carpet while he’s, like, skulking behind, right?” Harris laughed.
However, things changed when a comment came out that he had said he “wasn’t of that ‘persuasion’”.
Neil Patrick Harris on coming out
“The target came towards me in a very weird way,” he explained. “Someone asked a publicist about my sexuality and the publicist said that I was not of that persuasion. That turned into a, ‘That’s weird for him to say because we know that he’s gay, what a weird [thing to say], why is he doing that?’”
Harris continued: “Then it became: ‘Oh! I’m gonna have to say something. I’ve gotta get ahead of the story, because I don’t want to be coming out in reaction to: ‘If anyone has any information on Neil Patrick Harris, have you ever slept with him? Please come forward.’ You don’t want those stories.”
In response to the rumours, Harris and his then-agent and publicist crafted a statement to share that felt “authentic” to himself and “really truthful”.
“I think then at that point I was a little scared of what would come from that, what kind of stigma would come from that?” he said. “At that time, there were people who would go and plant ‘God hates f*gs’ signs on lawns of people, right? It was a potential to be a bad week,” he laughed.
However, none of that transpired. “There was indifference at best,” he said. “There were a lot of people before my coming out that had a much harder time, and that paved the way for me to come out, in a way.
“I was a little bit offended that more people weren’t surprised,” Harris joked. “I expected a little more, ‘Wait, what? Him?! He’s so masc!’ So the indifference to me was a little… ‘C’mon, really? You didn’t imagine me on a private island with Jennifer Love Hewitt?’”
He concluded: “Now we live in much different times. And whoever you’re thinking about when you’re jerking off, like, that’s who you should be proud to try and attract.”
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