Wayne Brady is opening up about being pansexual. While speaking with PEOPLE magazine at the 2024 GLAAD Media Awards on Thursday and explained why people could be confused about the term and revealed that he had to do his own “research” to get more understanding.
“I had to do research and find out what it was that I was, “I think the biggest misconception — and I even make a joke about it onstage tonight — is that people think that you’re an indecisive bisexual. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Let me set you straight.”
“What the definition basically boils down to is, regardless of gender, regardless,” he continues. “So that means that I am happily free to fall in love with anybody here. If you’re gay, if you’re straight, if you’re non-binary, trans, I don’t care.”
During the conversation Wayne Brady also described the term as being bisexual with an “open mind” and explained why he wasn’t feeling joy in the beginning of the journey.
“And the answer was no because despite having been in all of these unsuccessful relationships and now dealing with what I know can be diagnosed as love addiction, I started to go, ‘Okay, I’m feeling something, but I just don’t know how to get there,’ ” the actor and TV host recalled to PEOPLE.
He said he thought about the fact that he’d been attracted to certain men in his life but “always pushed that aside because of how I was raised, and because I live in today’s world.”
Since breaking the news about his sexuality, Brady did his first interview with ET’s Nischelle Turner and explained how he feels his announcement will now help out his dating life.
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“It would be hard for me to truly put myself 100 percent into a relationship when there’s this nagging doubt that I have not explored that piece of me, or even given voice to having that option,” Brady explained. “… It doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to manifest itself in a relationship with a man, or a relationship with this person. I don’t know, but at least being able to voice that, so that, if I go into a relationship, whomever I’m in a relationship with knows me 100 percent. “I think that’s the piece that was missing, that I couldn’t verbalize, ’cause I couldn’t lock on to it. I always felt this much dishonest, and if I was being dishonest, then there’s no way to truly give yourself 100 percent,” he continued. “Now I feel differently about that ’cause I went, ‘Oh, well now you know. So if you were to be involved with me, you know Wayne in totality.’ I’m not hiding anything now, so now I can approach you in a way that I never have.”