Kevin McHale Talks Coming Out as Gay & Why He Kept Quiet During 'Glee' Days

Kevin McHale is opening up about coming out as gay for the first time in an interview with journalist Marc Malkin.

The 29-year-old former Glee actor confirmed to fans he was gay when he tweeted about Ariana Grande‘s song “No Tears Left to Cry” last month, but he didn’t even realize he was coming out when he tweeted it.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Kevin said about his tweet. 24 hours went by and he saw all of the responses to his tweet. “Would anyone choose to come out in a tweet about an Ariana Grande song? It was eye opening for a number of reasons. People don’t know. I’ve been living in this bubble where I was just like, ‘Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean I’m not openly living my life.’”

“If somebody was a big fan and following everything I was doing [on social media], like the people I interact with on Twitter on a daily basis, I think there was zero surprise. People knew,” Kevin added. “The organizations I’ve been supporting and all that sort of work has been apparent, at least to me. I’ve always supported LGBT organizations and things like that because I felt like I had a vested interest in this where I wanted to help out.”

Kevin opened up about how he was in a long-term relationship during his early 20s and didn’t want his coming out to affect the guy he was dating.

“I was very conscious of, this wasn’t just my life they’ll be talking about if I do mention something, it’s also the person I’m with and if they’re not necessarily at the same place as I am, it’s not really fair to them,” Kevin said. The guy he was with was terrified of one family member finding out he was gay, so he was respectful to that.

Kevin, who is now dating fellow actor Austin McKenzie, also said he never talked about being gay as no one ever asked him about it.