Ellen: Born again
By Judy Wieder
(From The Advocate, March 14, 2000)

In her first interview with the gay press, Ellen DeGeneres faces the past and future with resilience and a brand-new attitude

When stand-up and sitcom comedian Ellen DeGeneres decided to free both herself and her TV character from the burdens of the closet in the 1996 Emmy-winning “Puppy Episode” of Ellen, her heartfelt decision seemed to stop the world in its orbit. For DeGeneres it was simple: She couldn’t stand it anymore. It was making her sick to live and create with only half her engines running. For the rest of society, apparently, it was much more complicated—yep, she was gay all right, but now everyone had an opinion about it.

“People kept saying how sick of all the media about me they were,” the reluctant activist says in the privacy of her Los Angeles home. “But what people got so ‘sick of’ was all the press on press on press. It was never me talking. It was everyone else going at it.”

What followed—the cover of Time, falling in love with Anne Heche, rising to the top of everyone’s “in” lists, falling off them and into the depths of despair when the tide turned, striking out, folding her tent, finding a retreat from Hollywood, coming back—is history, inaccurate as it may or may not be. The truth is, no one knows what really happened—or, at least, not from DeGeneres’s perspective.

So as DeGeneres prepares to enjoy her first HBO executive-produced drama, If These Walls Could Talk 2, as she takes her first stand-up routine in eight years on the road (a tour that will culminate with a July HBO special), and as she films her new television pilot for CBS about a variety show hostess, the 42-year-old actress finally puts aside all distractions and does the one thing she’s never done before…

This is the first time you’ve spoken to the gay press?
Yes.

Then we need to go back in time and catch up. When you originally came out, you talked to Time magazine and Primetime Live. Unlike other gay stars—Greg Louganis, for example—who also did mainstream media when they came out but included the gay press, you did not. Can you talk about why you wouldn’t? You know I tried very hard to get you to talk to The Advocate. I had heard that you were mad at us because we “pushed you too much.”
Well, that’s certainly not true. I was never mad. I did only three things. I was planning on doing two: the Diane Sawyer interview and Time. That’s it.

And then you did Oprah?
I did Oprah because Oprah was in my coming-out episode. Oprah wanted me on her show. And of course I wasn’t going to say no. Also, the other reason I didn’t do the gay press is that there were people in my camp who were advising me, telling me, “Let’s not just target a gay audience. This is bigger than that,” which, of course, is true.

But talking with the mainstream is not the same as talking with, for lack of a better phrase, your “family,” people who have gone through what you are struggling with.
Yeah. And that’s the whole point. I think I was still scared and feeling, Oh, do I want to just completely position myself as a gay person now? As much as I was labeling myself, I was afraid. And, yes, I knew your questions would be different.

We actually heard that The Advocate was “too gay” for you to do.
Well, certainly you know those words would never come out of my mouth—to say that something is “too gay.” It was a lot of people advising me, saying, “This is not a political statement. This is just you doing something for the show and personally for you.” And then it did turn into a political thing. I became an activist, which I didn’t intend on doing. I really was just doing something I thought would be creative and also freeing for me.

Well, as you know by now, the personal is political. Telling who we are is revolutionary.
Yeah.

When the whole thing happened with Chastity Bono’s being misquoted as saying your show was “too gay”—
I want you to know that we’ve worked all that out. We’ve talked it through.

Yes, I heard that, and I’m very glad. So what do you think people meant when they were saying that your show was too gay?
That was my question! What are they talking about? Is a show too straight? In my opinion there are some that are too straight [chuckling]—for me, anyway.

Is that what they meant by “too gay”? There was not enough room for heterosexuals to see their lives?
Maybe it was. I mean, my show was certainly a world that I identified with. And a lot of people I know identified with it. But, like you said, maybe it was too gay for somebody because [anything] gay at all is “too gay.” I just substitute gay with uncomfortable.

But weren’t you prepared for a backlash? You are a pioneer. And when you’re a pioneer, you’re taking a risk, and when you’re taking a risk, you’re going to get hurt. What was so unexpected?
All of it! All of it! First of all, I didn’t understand how big it was. When news of my character leaked out on talk radio and everybody was going nuts, I was just shocked that it was such big news. It was all everybody was talking about!

Except you.
I couldn’t talk about it! I couldn’t at all say anything. We hadn’t been given the go-ahead. I just had to hide. And then when the show aired and got such high ratings, when it turned into parties everywhere, it seemed like it was going to be great because the reviews were great. I was happy with it. And I didn’t want to come back on the air.

Right! I remember that.
Because I didn’t really know where to go with it. So I was fighting them, saying, “Let me go, let’s end on a high note, let me out of this.” And Michael Eisner wouldn’t let me. He said, “You have to come back.” And I said, “I don’t know where to go with this. I can’t go back in the closet. We’re going to have to deal with this.” And I was afraid they wouldn’t let me deal with it.
We had 45 million viewers for the coming-out show. It dropped to something like 15 million for the following show because it wasn’t advertised. Then we came back the next season and there was no advertisement for the premiere.

And you didn’t even want to come back.
Right. Now I’m coming back, and they’re not behind it. I heard stories that affiliates were threatening ABC, saying, “Take this show off the air.” And, of course, ABC had already bought it. So they just didn’t advertise it—so they could just throw their hands up and tell people, “Look, we’re not trying to help it! We’re not doing anything. We have to air it because we already paid for it.”

People said that the show wasn’t funny. I laughed. And I loved the episode with Emma Thompson. Didn’t she get an Emmy for it?
Yes, and it was considered one of the funniest ever. But all of a sudden it was too much for everyone. It was “OK, shut up.” They didn’t like the show. Yeah, it was a lot to take on. And I was aware of that. But, again, I’m really proud of it. I’m sorry that it ended the way it did, but I’m thrilled that we got to do it.

What about the “you’re going too fast” criticisms?
Maybe I didn’t go slow enough. I don’t know. It was frustrating for me to go really slowly and take as long as I did for [the character] Laurie and I to go to bed together. I mean, I thought we were going slow. And then there were shows that had nothing to do with my character being gay.

Which didn’t really work either because we were all waiting for you to get back to being gay.
Sure. Look, I was 40 years old, and I deserved to be a sexual being. Suddenly it wasn’t about Ellen getting her toe stuck in the blinds. They had to deal with a grown-up. And that’s a different kind of funny. But it was amazing lessons for me to learn. And I should’ve just trusted that the path that I was on was the path that I was meant to be on. I was going through a birth. In fact, I’m thinking of calling my stand-up special “Born Again.”

Going back to the gay press and the irony of The Advocate also being considered too gay, what do you think of the gay press after going through all this?
Well, for example, another national gay magazine, not The Advocate, at the end of either 1997 or 1998 had this horrible picture of me with the words “A poll was taken, and it found that many Americans know Ellen but few like her.” And I remember looking at it and thinking, Why, in a gay magazine, do you need to put that at the top of your chart? Today I am in a place of total forgiveness and compassion for how everyone feels. But at the time, when I was going through such major grieving over losing my show, this kind of thing was so mean. Whatever publication I picked up was never celebrating the positive stand I took—it was always talking about the failed ratings and that the show was too gay.

You must have been afraid to read anything or turn on the TV.
Yes, after a certain amount of time I was saying, “OK—straight people hate me. Gay people hate me. Even gay publications aren’t trying to spin it around.” I do believe that this community needs to support one another. If we were as organized as the extreme right, we’d be very powerful.

You and Anne did the Los Angeles Times Magazine together. It seemed to make people very angry. Were you happy with how you came off in that article?
Yes. Our work situation had changed for us. People may have thought it seemed like it was complaining on our parts—because people looked at us like poor little rich girls who have all this money and are celebrities and yet are complaining about not getting more work. It wasn’t about that. It was about the shift in people’s attitudes and the loss of work. It hurts any person if you want to do something and you don’t get the opportunity to do it anymore.

And it was such a huge fall for you.
Exactly. I experienced both sides of it because when I came out, everything was great. I was “entertainer of the year,” and I was one of the “ten most fascinating people.” And it was a whole year of celebrating Ellen. And then it went to the complete opposite end. Suddenly I had become this person that everybody was saying, “Oh, I hate her. Oh, I love her.” And I heard about all of it. It just got to be where I couldn’t watch TV without somebody saying something mean. I was the punch line of every joke, like Monica Lewinsky.

What a ride!
Yes, I got to experience “Who am I when no one likes me? Who am I when I don’t have a show? Who am I when nobody’s laughing at me?” And I found out that I’m still OK. So that’s a blessing.

But you decided to retreat?
Yeah. My first idea was, OK, Hollywood doesn’t like me, so I’ll leave. The one thing that I didn’t want to do was get hard. I think for a while, instead, I got depressed. Then it turned into anger. I was so angry. And I just wanted to say, “Don’t you all understand me? What did I do wrong?”

Did you do anything wrong?
Maybe I did a lot of things wrong, but I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t have a booklet. I didn’t open it to page 1 of Coming Out: Here’s How to Do It. I just did what I thought I should do.

So you were human.
Yeah. I went ahead and showed you exactly who I am. And that’s what hurt. It was like, “Oh, God. They’re seeing who I am, and they don’t like who I am!”

And, of course, the world was also dealing with your falling in love with Anne and being so out there with it.
Yes, it was a new picture in people’s minds, and they didn’t know how to process it. People had never seen me with somebody before. They had never seen me at a premiere holding hands with my last girlfriend—just like you hear that Brad [Pitt] and Jennifer [Aniston] are together, but you don’t see the courtship and the dating. Well, we didn’t mean to show all that. We didn’t mean to become The Real World of lesbian dating.

Since your coming-out became one of the biggest events in gay history, whose coming-out encouraged you?
Well, k.d. and Melissa both came out before I did. Martina…but not as much as k.d. and Melissa because I was friends with them at the time. We used to talk about coming out all the time. I really think it would be such a great documentary to do. I’d love for us to get together again because those were great times when we all used to hang out every Sunday at Julie and Melissa’s house in the swimming pool and sitting in the Jacuzzi, playing guitar and making up songs. But then we all got busy. Melissa and k.d. wanted me to come out, but they never pressured me in any way.

I hear you’re going to the Millennium March in D.C. this spring. Is that because you couldn’t go in ’93?
I remember crying, wishing I could be a part of the march on Washington in 1993. I thought, This is a huge group of people that I belong to. And I can’t do that because I’m not out! That was a powerful thing to watch the march, and to not be able to be there—it impacted me and just tortured me more. I wanted to be able to be out. My friends were out! And I kept justifying why I couldn’t—because music is different from television. If you sell 6 million albums, you’re a huge star. If you have 6 million viewers on television, you’re canceled.

I’d like to talk about some of the things revealed in your mother’s first book, Love, Ellen. There’s a scene in which your father calls out to you after you had your leg cut open and says, “You’re OK, Ellen. Just get up and walk!” Naturally his actions, based in part on his Christian Science beliefs, were full of denial. Would you say that denial was a big part of your family?
Yeah. I’ve struggled with being raised in a family that didn’t talk about anything at all. My father always said, “Just be nice and make sure everybody likes you.” My father is a very fearful person. He’s a wonderful person, a kind person, but he’s never been a risk taker at all.

So how did you ever manage to pull off coming out?
I have done everything I could to break out of that. To go as far as I have is just amazing coming from that family. I knew I didn’t want to end up like that. I don’t want to be scared of anything. And this last year and a half I got the beautiful blessing of facing just about every one of my fears—including the fire that almost took our home. All I would have had left was my mother and my girlfriend and my animals—and that was enough for me. I realized when we were grabbing things that nothing else was important.

That’s a big change.
I was raised to believe that celebrity is important. Money is important. I was taught that if somebody has money, then they’re very important. And if they’re a celebrity—wow! That’s really important. And so of course I became a celebrity. And of course I wanted to make a lot of money. All those things seemed to be what would make me happy. Then I learned after having money and becoming a celebrity that it’s not what makes you happy. It doesn’t matter if you have the whole world loving you or hating you. And knowing this has enriched my relationship with Anne.

Which was under attack from the beginning.
Yes, they tried everything that could tear us apart. Even rumors of her having an affair with Vince Vaughn.

Right, what was that about?
She had done a movie [Return to Paradise] with Vince, and they had such great chemistry. So of course they said she was having an affair with him! And I thought, What a mean thing! It was really offensive to me—like I’d be that stupid not to know she’s having an affair. And Anne was saying, “Well, it’s offensive to me too.” So we were arguing over who it was more offensive to. She was saying, “What does that make me look like! What kind of a person am I to have an affair?” And I’d say, “Yeah, but what kind of a person am I that I’m going to stay with you?”

Sounds awful.
But it just made us realize what is important to us, and we have such a strong foundation now, nothing can rock us. We went to couples therapy and dealt with a lot of stuff that we were going through. And our therapist said, “I’m amazed that y’all have made it this long and that you’re still together. You should be proud of yourselves.”

It’s good to hear it wasn’t all heaven and that you had to work at it.
Of course. And there were personal attacks too. One magazine put us in their category of “Women We Love.” I had just been in their last issue. And then, when Anne and I got together, they put her in “Women We Love” and they put me in “And a Few We Don’t.” They would pit us against each other.

How have your relationships with closeted actors changed since coming out?
I don’t have relationships with them. I did. At functions they avoid being next to me. It’s very interesting. I used to be very mad. I used to think, Here you have this opportunity to help a lot of people. It’s not going to be as hard for the next person to do it. It really was my intention that this would be like, “C’mon! Line up! Everybody!” And it was interesting to see that not one person did.
And I think there were people in this industry who were trying to make an example of us, like, “Don’t you dare think of doing this because look what happened to them.” It’s really a shame because there is power in numbers. If you have a whole lot of people who come out, they can’t boycott everybody.
And I used to be very angry, but now I’m not angry. I feel sorry for them because I know the pain. You can say, “It’s nobody’s business,” but the only reason you say that is because you’re scared that you’re going to lose money. But it’s not my place to judge. You know, we need a lot of help here. But my truth is my truth. And it doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s truth.

Certainly you felt healthier after coming out?
Of course, but just coming out doesn’t make you get rid of the shame that’s been there for years. I think a lot of my passion over coming out was my fighting and saying, “I’m OK! I’m OK! How dare you say I’m not OK!” I just had to say it over and over until I really believed it.

And then Anne comes along without all this old closeted lesbian baggage and shows you how pure and simple love should be.
Oh, yes, but that’s what Anne has finally realized, and she has got to this place of saying, “Oh, God. No wonder people hated me on Oprah. This is a really hard thing, and people struggle with this. And I’m just coming on the show and going, ‘Oh! I just saw Ellen across the room and fell in love.’ Wow, I would’ve hated me too!” But honestly, I was doubting her too when I met her because I thought, You can’t possibly be for real; you don’t know what you’re getting into.

Exactly. You had to make sure she wasn’t on some happy little detour from heterosexuality.
That certainly could’ve been [the case]. And I would think that if you’re a betting person, you’re going to bet that this is not going to last. I told her, “I’m not interested in having an affair or a fling. I appreciate your interest. And thank you. But no.” And she kept saying, “I’m not playing games.” And her career was just taking off, so I said, “I think I should get out of your life.” And she said to me, “Don’t ever say that to me again.” Anne is a remarkable human being. She’s the most evolved person I’ve ever met. She is my little Buddha.

Ellen, I need to throw something else unpleasant at you…
Oh, sure, Judy. Please! [Laughs]

Your girlfriend Kat died in a car accident in 1980. You actually drove by the accident but didn’t know it was her. Then you went on to use your pain over that experience in your breakthrough stand-up monologue “Phone Call to God.” What was it like having to perform that monologue from the closet, knowing it was about the death of a woman you loved—yet having to refer to her as your “friend”?
[Sighs] I had seen her right before the accident too. The most horrible part of it was, she was cheating on me and we were living together. I moved out to teach her a lesson, thinking that I’d go back. So I was staying with someone else at the time. My brother’s band was performing that night, and I saw her at the club. It was really loud, and she kept saying, “When are you going to come home?” And I kept acting like I couldn’t hear her, like the music was too loud. She left first, and then I left. We drove past the accident she was in.

You didn’t know, so you didn’t stop?
It had just happened, and the car was split in two. The sirens were behind us. We slowed down and said, “Jesus! Look at that!” And we kept going. And the next morning at 6 A.M. her sister came to the house where I was staying and said, “Kat died last night.” When she told me where, I realized that I was there.

Oh, Ellen…
And she said she was alive for three hours and she didn’t have ID on her so they couldn’t call. And I was like, “She was alive. I could’ve been there.” My mind was so full of so many things: If I had just gone home with her that night. If I wouldn’t have been such an asshole.

How did you deal with this?
I moved out of our house and was in this tiny, tiny basement apartment, and it was infested with fleas. And I just kept thinking, Why are fleas here and this beautiful girl is gone? I don’t understand this. So I just started writing what it would be like to call and ask God why fleas are here. And it just came out in comedy in ten minutes, and I thought, I’m doing this on The Tonight Show, and Johnny Carson is going to call me over, and I’m going to be the first woman in the history of the show to be called over on the first appearance. And I was. So I think about her a lot. I used to think about her when I would do that monologue. I’d think, Wow. Where did that come from?

A good way to handle all that pain.
Yeah. Great comedy is born from tragedy. It was a pretty devastating event in my life because I felt tremendously guilty. I really thought I could’ve done something. But it was a horrible accident, and there was no way she was going to make it. I don’t know what she would have looked like, and it would have stayed with me forever. So I wasn’t supposed to see her. And she was supposed to go. It was her time to go.

Was this your first death?
Yes. I was 20 years old, and it was my first taste of knowing that somebody could be gone like that—like you could be talking to them and then by the next day you will never see them again. And I started thinking how she was a cute girl. She was a bartender at a gay bar. She was very popular. She used to look at herself and check out her ass in the mirror and fix her hair. She was very vain and very confident and I thought, None of that matters anymore. It doesn’t matter about her hair. It doesn’t matter about how great her ass was. It doesn’t matter about how many girls flirted with her. It doesn’t matter. And it made me start living a different way and realize what’s important.

Your mother has written about her second husband and how he sexually molested you. I wondered how you felt about having that disclosed.
Mother asked me if she could put that in the book. She wouldn’t have done that without me. The reason we thought it was important to reveal was to show her journey and what women go through and how they’ll justify anything to stay married, to have a husband—even go so far as to not believe their own child. As if your child would make something like that up.

She didn’t believe you?
Yeah. I didn’t tell her right away because she had just had a mastectomy. And I didn’t want to hit her with this news too.

When I read how you protected her, I was extremely moved by your actions. As a young adult, how did this sexual abuse play into your feelings about men and trust and all of that stuff?
If you look at pictures of me when I’m 11 years old, wearing a tie when I’m playing, clearly I was gay. It had nothing to do with a bad experience with a man.

Were there any concerns on your part that having this revealed would lead to Oh, great—one more odd thing about me.
Yeah. I really didn’t want to have to talk about it, but at the same time, the statistics are that one in three women have been molested in some way, and that’s a pretty high statistic. And there should be more people talking about it; it shouldn’t be a shameful thing. It never is your fault. So I don’t mind talking about it. He did horrible things to me and was a bad man. I should have told Mother right away, but I thought on top of her just having a mastectomy, she doesn’t need to hear that her husband tried to rape her daughter. So I just didn’t tell her, and I should have.
And that’s the lesson, hopefully, someone gets from the book: Don’t ever stay silent when something like this happens. It doesn’t matter who it is; you shouldn’t be scared. Because of course they try to intimidate you and say “Nobody will believe you.” But you should always—always—tell somebody. That’s the important message.

How did growing up in the South influence you? Do you still think of yourself as a Southerner?
I do, and people make fun of me when I say “y’all.”

You don’t say that!
Yeah, I do. That’s part of my vocabulary. But, yeah, I’m proud to be from New Orleans. I love that city. And I don’t know how it influenced me other than learning a lot about drinking at an early age. You must know about alcohol there. There’s to-go cups, and there’s drive-through margarita places. It’s, like, the most dangerous city in the world. It’s crazy that everybody drinks so much there.

Did you know any gay people?
I think there were two gay bars there. But I didn’t really know anyone gay.

Did you know you were gay?
No, I didn’t know I was gay. I realized it when I moved out of New Orleans and was in a very small town. I can’t really talk about this because it was such a small town; they’ll know who my gay experience was with. Then I went back to New Orleans, thinking, Oh, it was just that experience. Thinking, It was just her. And then I met a group of girls. One girl was bisexual, and I had an experience with her. I was still dating guys, and I remember thinking OK, this was just her again. And then I got into a relationship with this girl, and we went into a gay bar. It was my first experience. I was 18 years old, and it was the weirdest thing in the world to walk in and see a whole bunch of girls all dancing together. And I was uncomfortable. But it didn’t take long for that to wear off. Then I lived in gay bars. Not the healthiest experience, which is what’s really sad. It’s the only place where we could go then. Of course, now there’s lots more places. But when you’re a young girl in a small town…

Were you telling yourself that you were bisexual?
I was still trying to date guys, and then I just gave up on guys. I wasn’t really labeling myself at all at first, and then I think I’d decided I was gay. I realized I was definitely gay. I kept having bad experiences with girls, so I tried dating guys again. Then I thought, I’m running out of genders. Where am I going to go next? I was with a really sweet guy. I had sex with only two guys. I tried to have sex with him and just didn’t enjoy it. I mean, just kissing a girl was so exciting to me, and kissing a guy was just so blah. Now all the guys are going to hate me. Guys reading this, I love you.

In the segment of If These Walls Could Talk 2 that Anne wrote and directed called “Miss Conception,” it felt like Sharon Stone was playing Anne or at least that Anne was expressing herself through that character. Do you two want to get pregnant and be parents?
We hadn’t gone through the process of trying to get pregnant the way Sharon and I do in the film, but it was a daily conversation between us. We did a lot of research on the sperm bank, the donors, and what you have to go through. So while she was writing it, we were actually looking into it. We were really trying to have a baby at the time she was writing it. Right afterward we decided not to have a baby. And so we’ve gone back and forth, and at this point we’re at the stage of not. But that changes every day. Tomorrow you may find out that we’re pregnant.

Would you want to be a mother?
Well, that’s the question. I think that we love our lives so much, but, of course, that would change it. I mean, this is so nice now: to have our time and be able to be spontaneous, to stay in bed all day. [Having a child is] a responsibility for the rest of my life. It’s not just a cute little baby that I could put in Gap clothes. It’s also going to be a teenager that’s going to want to pierce its nose. And as much as I think I’m liberal, I think I’d be very conservative as a parent. And the whole potty training thing scares me! I like the fact that with a cat you have a litter box. And I don’t know if that’s appropriate for a child to just have a litter box.

Well, as Anne’s HBO piece shows, it’s not all that easy to get pregnant, anyway.
If we could get pregnant, we’d get pregnant now. Anne was just offered a documentary project in China that was about panda bears, which would have been fun. But she would have been in China, and she said, “You know, if I go to China, I’m going to come home with a baby.”

I thought you were going to say she’d come home with a panda bear.
I would’ve come home with a panda bear; she’d come home with a baby! Anne wants to have the baby because she wants to have that experience. I really want to adopt a baby because there are so many children in this world and we’re overpopulated. Of course, most of the babies that need homes are African-American babies, and people always want a white baby. Meanwhile, Chinese girls are just thrown out into the streets. But I don’t even know enough about my own culture. I think Columbus came over and he killed Indians, and here we are! So I don’t know what to tell an African-American baby; I don’t know what to tell a Chinese baby. I know that we can’t rely on our schools to teach our babies because our schools aren’t doing such a good job. And…oh, no, now I’m going to get letters from teachers! You teachers who are reading this are good!

What are your spiritual beliefs?
I was raised Christian Science, which is like “mind over matter.” I think there is something to that. But I have a problem with a lot of the rules. I don’t believe the god that I believe in is judgmental. I think whatever works for you is right. Heaven or hell is what you create right this minute where you are. You have a choice to live in joy or not. And that’s my belief. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong, but I’m not hurting anybody.

Were you able to hold onto this? Did it sustain you during all the hard times?
Not at all. [Laughs] When I met Anne I was in this beautiful place of just knowing that whatever we create in our minds, we create in reality. Yet I slipped into the darkest, darkest place. But I had to go that far down. I had to slip into that place to confront all of these fears because I was still trying to hold on to approval and all the things that I’m trying to let go of—pride, ego. But now I’m there, and, hopefully, I won’t slip so far down again.

OK, Ellen, Advocate readers are a very special kind of audience, and you’ve never addressed them before, so is there anything specific you wish to say?
Well, instead of focusing on what we’ve talked about before, about the people who weren’t supportive, I’d really much rather thank the people who were so supportive. I have received so many letters from around the world. I’m in a really healthy place right now, but the only thing that kept me going during those darker times were the letters from people saying “Thank you so much” and explaining how I impacted their lives—I always say that even if it was one person. My coming-out was an important thing for me to do in my life. It’s more important than any ratings I’ll ever have on television or any good review—just that I saved a life.

I’m really glad you’re saying this.
It got kind of scary because people would say, “You know, if you never do anything again in your whole life, you’ve done enough.” [Laughs] I’ve heard that so many times, and it’s supposed to be a compliment. And I guess it is a compliment, but I feel like I have so much more to do. I mean, I just accidentally did something that people look at as a very courageous, brave thing. And it wasn’t. It was just something that I did, and it accidentally helped a lot of people. But I’m not a brave person. I’m learning to be. I think I’ve become a brave person through the journey and the slide down.

The slide down?
I will be the first to admit I slid down. And I think I participated in that. And I have to take responsibility for the bad things, the negative things, the mistakes I’ve made. I can’t change them, but I take responsibility for them. And I just want to apologize to anyone I’ve rubbed the wrong way. Sorry for making my mistakes in public. And so I really want to let go of anything negative that happened and just say “Thank you so much for the support” to the people who have stayed with me. And for the people who haven’t, please come back [laughs] and give me a chance to be funny again, which is what I want to do—to really get back to my art. Not avoid who I am as a gay person but really just get back to doing what I do and what brought me here in the first place. And, hopefully, people will find it in their hearts to say, “Oh, OK. I didn’t get it for a while. But maybe I would’ve made the same mistakes. I don’t know.” So I just want to thank the people who supported me.