{"id":2725,"date":"2026-06-01T21:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/01\/jonathan-bailey-opens-up-being-confident-in-coming-out-i-wasnt-gonna-not-hold-my-boyfriends-hand-in-the-street\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T21:33:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:33:00","slug":"jonathan-bailey-opens-up-being-confident-in-coming-out-i-wasnt-gonna-not-hold-my-boyfriends-hand-in-the-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/01\/jonathan-bailey-opens-up-being-confident-in-coming-out-i-wasnt-gonna-not-hold-my-boyfriends-hand-in-the-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Bailey Opens Up Being Confident in Coming Out: \u201cI Wasn\u2019t Gonna Not Hold My Boyfriend\u2019s Hand in the Street\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tJonathan Bailey<\/a> and Elton John<\/a> discussed their own experiences with coming out in the public eye during a conversation that was part of the\u00a0inaugural Elton John Impact Awards,\u00a0<\/a>which honored the Wicked<\/em> star and other trailblazing\u00a0LGBTQ+<\/a>\u00a0community members and prominent allies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tDuring the discussion, John asked Bailey if he\u2019s ever felt pressured to hide the fact that he was gay, or if he might have been scared to come out, or if he had enough confidence that it didn\u2019t matter. Bailey replied that he had felt a combination of all three. \t<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI think there\u2019s so much nuance to it,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cIn a way, I feel innately that I knew myself at quite a young age actually, and the hardware is one of confidence. And then of course, you just take on these stories and these narratives that are sort of like cobwebs. And the closer I got, I found acting. And I think the reason why I loved acting is because for the first time, in a world where you have to sort of code switch and be hypervigilant about what you\u2019re saying and how you come across, especially to your peers, if they\u2019re gonna acknowledge something that you say or the way you say it as denoting of your sexuality. To then get given a script and to actually be able to lean into the right thing to do and to then be truthful in it felt really, really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe actor, whose credits also include Bridgerton<\/em> and Fellow Travelers, <\/em>said that as acting became something he was thinking about as a career and not just a hobby, he became more aware of the proverbial glass ceiling.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI was well aware that [of] the possibilities and the limits of queer actors and what that means to an audience and whether that bleeds into commerce and how that affects it,\u201d he said. \u201cSo yeah, I think when I was in my early twenties, there was definitely an understanding that, to be gay would be a hindrance.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tUltimately, he realized that he needed to be his authentic self and not make any compromises.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI wasn\u2019t gonna not hold my boyfriend\u2019s hand in the street, and that was something that I felt so strongly in an animal sense,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd of course if that meant that it was gonna impede any potential work, then I was willing to take that risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBailey shared that he feels lucky to be living in a time that\u2019s more accepting than was the case when John was becoming an adult at a time when there were no gay role models to look up to.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI didn\u2019t know what gay was in the 1950s,\u201d John agreed. \u201cNobody, there was no gay people in my family. There were no examples of it around. I didn\u2019t really have a gay experience till I was 23. And then it all, you know, blossomed. It was like a rocket taken off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tFor Bailey, he looked series like the British show This Life <\/em>(\u201cI remember being so turned on and so excited\u201d) and The Little Mermaid<\/em> (\u201cI was obsessed with Prince Eric, which I later understood\u201d).<\/p>\n

\t\u201cAnd then Brokeback Mountain<\/em> came out when I was in my sixth form [final two years of secondary school in the U.K.], and I changed my thesis on representation in terms of homosexuality in Brokeback Mountain<\/em>, just so that I had an excuse to go back to cinema about 15 times,\u201d he said. \u201cBut even though the stories itself were painful, it was just enough to see actors performing them, which just shows how bread-crumbed I think we were, at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHe also praised \u201cfearless gay actors\u201d like Ian McKellen \u201cwho have been out from the get-go,\u201d his Fellow Travelers<\/em> star Matt Bomer and others whom he\u2019s learned from. He also expressed a hope for the upcoming generation to be able to not have to hide their sexuality. \t<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI wonder if the next generation just needs to know how to harness the joy that they can communicate to their fans and in the stories they tell,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd just know that we\u2019re gonna need it more than ever. Because obviously it\u2019s a striking time where there\u2019s a real threat that things can slip. But it\u2019s an amazing thing, isn\u2019t it? Generational relationships and being in a part of a community where we are all just benefactors of who came before us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe Elton John Impact Awards are presented by iHeartRadio and P&G, in partnership with the Elton John AIDS Foundation and Brandi Carlile\u2019s Looking Out Foundation. The other honorees are Laverne Cox, Melissa Etheridge, Billie Jean King, Orville Peck and Chappell Roan<\/a>. Hosted by Billy Porter and Elvis Duran, the special launched as a podcast series June 1 on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard and as an audio special airing across iHeartRadio PRIDE stations. The special features a performance of John\u2019s \u201cYour Song\u201d by Dove Cameron along with candid, personal conversations with Elton John; John\u2019s husband, David Furnish, who is chair of the Elton John AIDS Foundation; and this year\u2019s honorees.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Bailey and Elton John discussed their own experiences with coming out in the public eye during a conversation that was part of the\u00a0inaugural Elton John Impact Awards,\u00a0which honored the Wicked star and other trailblazing\u00a0LGBTQ+\u00a0community members and prominent allies.\u00a0 During the discussion, John asked Bailey if he\u2019s ever felt pressured to hide the fact that he was gay, or if he might have been scared to come out, or if he had enough confidence that it didn\u2019t matter. Bailey replied that he had felt a combination of all three. \u201cI think there\u2019s so much nuance to it,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cIn a way, I feel innately that I knew myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1626,2,915,1257,255,381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elton-john","category-hollywood","category-jonathan-bailey","category-lgbtq","category-lifestyle","category-lifestyle-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}