Duncan James thought he would “alienate” his female fans by coming out as gay.
Duncan James
The 42-year-old singer came out as gay in 2017 after having previously identified as bisexual, and has admitted he was worried about publicly sharing his sexuality out of fear that female fans of Blue might be disappointed.
Speaking during an appearance on ‘Loose Women’, he said: “It was a really hard thing for me to do, to come out. Coming from a boy band and coming from that kind of world where you have a lot of female fans … I didn’t want to alienate my fans, there was a lot of pressure from the record company, I didn’t want to let the boys down. It was so stupid, I had all these issues in my head about my sexuality, so I thought it was best to just keep my mouth shut.”
And Duncan credited his close friend and ‘Chicago’ co-star Brenda Edwards with helping him gain the confidence to come out.
He added to Brenda, who was on the panel of the ITV talk show: “But I remember doing ‘Chicago’ with you Brenda, and me telling you about my sexuality. And you just gave me a hug and you just said, ‘Baby who cares? You’re gorgeous’. And you just gave me so much love.”
In July 2019, the ‘One Love’ hitmaker went public with his romance with Rodrigo Reis, and has said meeting the Brazilian beauty has encouraged him to be himself.
When asked if he feels he can be his authentic self now, Duncan said: “Yeah definitely. Rodrigo is the first kind of relationship I’ve had that I’ve gone public with, we just had a lovely picture together when we were in Ghent, and I just posted it [on Instagram] and the reaction was crazy.”
And Rodrigo, who was also present for the interview from his home in Belgium, added: “We got lots of lovely messages, it was amazing.”
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