`I've hated myself a long time'
Ex-bachelor star Colton Underwood comes out as gay and feels relieved
Colton Underwood, a star of The Bachelor in 2019, came out as gay during an interview on Good Morning America Wednesday.
Underwood said he's now ready to come to terms with his sexuality. “I've ran from myself for a long time. I've hated myself for a long time,” Underwood told GMA co-anchor 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. Still nervous but, yeah, it's been a journey for sure.
“I'm emotional, but I'm emotional in such a good, happy, positive way,” he said. “I'm like the happiest and healthiest I've ever been in my life and that means the world to me.”
Underwood, 29, is a former football player who first appeared on ABC'S long-running reality franchise as a contestant on Becca Kufrin's season of The Bachelorette in 2018, then Bachelor in Paradise and the lead of The Bachelor.
On GMA, Underwood said he was in denial for a long time, especially after he grew up in the Catholic church and “learned in the Bible that being gay was a sin” and had similar negative connotations in the sports world. When cast on The Bachelor, he said, “I literally remember praying to God the morning I found out ... and thanking him for making me straight.”
He decided to come out because he had suicidal thoughts and realized “I would have rather died than say `I'm gay,' and I think that was sort of my wake-up call.”
“I was like, `This is your life. Take back control,'” Underwood said. He said when he came out to his friends and family, they were all very supportive.
Underwood was the Bachelor who was devastated that Cassie Randolph, whom he planned to propose to at the end of the season, said she didn't want to get engaged. Underwood begged her to reconsider, and she ultimately agreed to give their relationship a chance.
They later broke up and Randolph filed a restraining order against Underwood, alleging harassment. Randolph dropped it after they “reached a private agreement,” Underwood said then.
“I would like to say sorry for how things ended. I messed up. I made a lot of bad choices,” Underwood said about Randolph.
He said he was genuinely in love with her.
“It not only made it harder and more confusing for me, if I'm being very honest. I loved everything about her. And it's hard for me to articulate exactly what my emotions were in going through that relationship with her ... because I obviously had an internal fight going on,” he said. “I would just say that I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart. I'm sorry for any pain and emotional stress I caused.
“I wish it wouldn't have happened the way it did. I wish that I would have been courageous enough to fix myself before I broke anybody else.”