Ricky Martin said he felt "violated" after a traumatizing interview with Barbara Walters during which she pressed him to confirm his sexuality in 2000.
At the time, there was speculation that Martin was gay. He had not yet come out but during the interview, Walters pushed him to put an end to the rumors.
"You could say, 'Yes I am gay or no I'm not,'" the then-ABC anchor said.
"Barbara, for some reason, I just don't feel like it," Martin replied.
Looking back, Martin told People on Wednesday that the interview had lasting effects.
"When she dropped the question, I felt violated because I was just not ready to come out. I was very afraid," he said, adding that, as a result, he suffers from post-traumatic stress.
Ten years after the interview, Martin came out. Walters later said she had acted inappropriately.
"In 2000, I pushed Ricky Martin very hard to admit if he was gay or not, and the way he refused to do it made everyone decide that he was," she told Toronto Star. "A lot of people say that destroyed his career, and when I think back on it now I feel it was an inappropriate question."
Martin said that he was reluctant to come out at that moment because "sexuality is one complicated thing," noting "how confusing attraction can be."
"It's not black and white," he told People. "It's filled with colors. When I was dating women, I was in love with women. It felt right, it felt beautiful. You can't fake chemistry – the chemistry was there with them. I wasn't misleading anyone."
Martin said that "you can't force someone to come out," and likened coming out to an egg.
"If you have an egg and you open it from the outside, only death comes out. But if the egg opens up from the inside, life comes out," he said.
Would Martin have answered differently given a second chance to do the interview? He has had over two decades to reflect on that.
"A lot of people say, what would you do differently?" Martin said. "Well, maybe I would have come out in that interview. It would've been great because when I came out, it just felt amazing. When it comes to my sexuality, when it comes to who I am, I want to talk about what I'm made of, about everything that I am. Because if you hide it, it's a life-or-death situation."
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Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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