A 17-year-old co-star of the just ended, made-in-Utah series “Andi Mack” has come out as bisexual — almost two years after the character he played came out as gay.
“I’m bi,” Joshua Rush tweeted on Tuesday, adding that it was “ironic” that he had not come out earlier.
“I suffered with some level of my own internalized homophobia even while playing the first openly gay character on Disney Channel,” he tweeted.
In Season 2 of “Andi Mack,” Rush’s character, Cyrus, had a crush on another boy and came out to his friends. The storyline continued through the end of the series, always remaining sweet and innocent, and ending with a bit of hand-holding in the series finale, which aired July 26.
“I saw so many of you watch Cyrus come out and [say] ‘Hey! I can be me!’ How ironic, isn’t it, that me, playing that character, never had mustered up that courage?” Rush tweeted.
“Instead of feeling the courage to tell you today that I am an out and proud bisexual man because of the character I played for four years, I feel that courage thinking of all of you, who felt emboldened by Cyrus to come out.”
Rush went on to provide a link to a GLAAD article about bisexuality, and ask his fans to donate to GLAAD, the LGBTQ media monitoring organization, and The Trevor Project, a crisis-intervention network for LGBTQ youth.
