“It was just one of those things I forgot to mention to the public”
BY CALYPSO LLOYD-DAVIES, IMAGE VIA INSTAGRAM (@AUBREYANDERSONEMMONS)
Modern Family star Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, known for playing Lily, daughter of characters Cam Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell Pritchett (Jesse Tyler-Ferguson), revealed her coming out as bisexual in June was a complete accident.
The actor went viral after sharing a video of her lip-syncing to a hilarious clip from the show, where Sofia Vergara’s character (Gloria) tells Lily she is Vietnamese, to which Lily protests: “No, I’m not, I’m gay! I’m gay!”, and Mitchell, her gay Dad, responds: “Honey, no, you’re not gay. You are just confused.”
Over the clip, Audrey wrote: “People keep joking so much abt me being gay when I literally am (I’m bi).” The video was followed by a caption reading: “Happy Pride month to all and to all a goodnight hehehe.”
To the star’s surprise, the video received huge amounts of attention, with over 500,000 likes, and even made worldwide headlines. In a recent interview with Them, she said: “It always surprises me when something goes a little bit viral that I do online, because I’ll just get one of my friends’ screenshots. A couple of my friends screenshotted the ‘bisexual coming out’ stories that were happening on Twitter, and I was like ‘what?’ I didn’t even notice how much coverage this whole bisexual thing was getting.”
Aubrey now admits that she never intended for the clip to be a coming-out statement. She revealed: “I didn’t even mean to come out, I just thought the video was really fun.” The star said, “It was just one of those things I forgot to mention to the public”, adding that “everybody” in her private life already knew.
The actor maintained that the reaction was “very unexpected”, and it was “not intentional” and “not plotted and schemed on at all”.
However, her accidental coming out has made Aubrey highlight the importance of normalising queerness. She told Them: “I didn’t even think of it as, ‘Oh, I’m coming out to the world as bisexual, this [is a brave thing] that I’m doing,’ because it shouldn’t have to be something. It shouldn’t have to be a moment of bravery to come out because it should just be normalised.”
Aubrey, describing herself as an “open book”, has recently released her new EP Drown and says she has long been a part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
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