First Gay Bachelor Colton Underwood Reveals He Came Out As a Result of Being Blackmailed

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The Bachelor star Colton Underwood revealed to Variety that he decided to publicly come out as gay only after being blackmailed.

Underwood first publicly revealed his sexuality while sitting down with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts.

“I’m gay and I came to terms with that earlier this year and have been processing it and the next step in all of this was sort of letting people know,” he announced. “Still nervous but, yeah, it’s been a journey for sure.”

In a Variety interview published Wednesday, Underwood admitted that he never planned on publicly discussing his sexual orientation, and figured he would live his life pretending to be a straight man.

Those plans changed in 2019, once the first gay Bachelor was caught visiting a spa whose clientele is largely gay men.

“I, at one point, during my rock bottom and spiral, was getting blackmailed,” Underwood said. “Nobody knows I was blackmailed.”

Underwood claimed to have received an anonymous email from someone who said they took nude photographs of him at the venue and were threatening to send them to the press.

The Bachelor star said he “should have never been there,” adding that he was at the spa “just to look.”

Underwood later revealed that he truly was the “Virgin Bachelor,” as while he did “experiment with men prior to being on ‘The Bachelorette,’” he had never had sex with a man, or anyone, before his time on the dating show.

In addition to addressing his sexuality, Underwood commented on his past relationship with Cassie Randolph — who won Underwood’s season of The Bachelor in 2019 and dated the ex-NFL player until they split up for good in 2020.

Randolph additionally filed a restraining order in September 2020, claiming that Underwood stalked her and placed a tracking device in her car — leading to a Change.org petition, signed by 35,000, pressuring Netflix to cancel the upcoming Underwood series. 

“I never want people to think that I’m coming out to change the narrative, or to brush over and not take responsibility for my actions, and now that I have this gay life that I don’t have to address my past as a straight man,” Underwood said. “Controlling situations to try to grasp at any part of the straight fantasy that I was trying to live out was so wrong.”