Wayne Brady is giving more insight on what the “biggest misconceptions” are about being pansexual.
He recently attended 2024 GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles, and while chatting with the correspondent with PEOPLE he explained that he understands why some folks are confused by the term — and that he even needed to “research” the topic himself.
According to PEOPLE he said:
“I had to do research and find out what it was that I was,” says Brady, who came out as pansexual in August 2023. “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.”
Brady explains that it’s all about “the person, which in my mind is the ultimate in acceptance and loving — so I win.”
After coming out last year, Brady described being pansexual to PEOPLE as “bisexual — with an open mind.”
At the time, he shared that Robin Williams’ 2014 death deeply affected him and set him on a surprising path of self-discovery.
In addition to doing therapy to try to understand why he wasn’t feeling joy in certain aspects of his life and being treated for “love addiction,” he found himself asking the question, “Wayne, um, are you gay?”
“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.”
Brady told PEOPLE he felt a lot of “shame” and worried about people finding out, despite having “a wonderful community” of friends in the LGBTQ+ community.
“I’ve always felt like a sham because I wasn’t being forthcoming with myself,” he said. “You can play at being an ally, but until the day that you can truly say, ‘This is who I am, and I wanna stand next to you,’ that’s not … I always wanted that day to come.”
When that day finally did come, Brady said the response was overwhelmingly positive.
“I’ve gotten so many DMs, emails and texts from people who, at a midpoint in their life, want to express themselves, whether it’s changing their work or coming out,” Brady told Yahoo Entertainment in December 2023.
He noted that he hoped his story would inspire others.
“It’s never too late to take hold of your story … for teenagers, young adults, theater students and young Black men who question the idea of masculinity, and what it all means,” he said, adding, “Past a certain point, life becomes too short to live in the dark all the time.”
