Tevin Campbell Opens Up About His Sexuality, Identity: ‘I Went On the Road to Discovering Myself’

Can we taaaaaalk...for a minute? I want to know if you know about the latest interview with Tevin Campbell where he opens up about what it’s like as a Black, gay man in the industry and his self-love journey.

Speaking on the PEOPLE Every Day podcast, Campbell reflected on his experience as a “former child star,” explaining how the industry sought to package him as a “young, heterosexual sex symbol” back in 1993, but that it didn’t stick.

“I don’t think the sex symbol thing worked, but the love songs last,” Campbell said.

He went on to explain how he never tried to “act a certain way or anything” nor did he try to hide any facets of his identity. But due to the times, “You just couldn’t be [gay] back then.”

After coming out to his family around age 19 and 20, Campbell then embarked on a quest to figure who he really was in order to come to place of true self-acceptance.

“I went on the road of discovering myself. I didn’t know who I was,” he explained, later saying of his time performing Hairspray in 2004: “Being around people who were like me, LGBTQ+ people that were living normal lives and had partners. I had never seen that. That was a great time in my life.”

That great time appears to have carried on as Campbell now exist in a space full of self-love and immense gratitude.

“What makes me happiest right now is how far I’ve come in life,” he said, “You know, there are a lot of child stars that don’t make it. But a lot of us do… and the fact that I’ve embraced me.”