Aunjanue Ellis Came Out as Bisexual And We Didn’t Even Notice

Say Word!? Aunjanue Ellis came out as bisexual and we didn’t even peep game. The ‘King Richard’ star spoke about her sexuality in an interview with Variety and spoke about how she showed up to the Essence Black Woman in Hollywood gala in March with the word “Queer” encrusted into her fit. Ellis says no one noticed.

“I was thinking, ‘Why didn’t more people pay attention to that?’ And I was like, they probably thought it said ‘Queen’ [Laughs]. It wasn’t that I was expecting any sort of major reaction or anything like that. One of my family members noticed, but nobody else did.”

However, Ellis says a member of her family was hurt by her decision to share with the world her true sexuality. The majority of her family has known about her orientation for decades.

“I am a work in progress, and my family and my community are works in progress.I really believe that that is important to say because I’m not alone. We see people on the other side of it, where everybody’s good and fine: ‘Love is love.’”

She speaks on life growing up in a deeply religious family.

“If they come to New York and they are around all my gay friends, they’re like, ‘Oh we’re cool.’ But don’t bring it to the house. Don’t be open with it.”

Ellis knew she was bisexual since she was 8 years old. She recalls thinking:

“Why does a woman have to be submissive to a man? ‘And then there was this other thing about me that I also didn’t understand.”

She adds that she tried “to talk my body into correct behavior.” And by “correct,” she frankly admits that was about liking boys.

“The solitude of that is so lonely, it’s violent. It’s violent because you literally have to tuck and place so many parts of you to be acceptable, so people won’t run from you and don’t want to be around you. It was exhausting. That’s what childhood was like. That’s what adolescence was like. I knew [my sexuality], but there was no template for it; there was no example of it; there was no place for it, and certainly no forgiveness for it.”

Ellis says she was in her 30s when she fully embraced her bisexuality. She speak on walking with another female attendee at a film festival.

“We were just spending time talking and hanging out. We walked by this stream — those streams in Utah where it snows once, and then it becomes a beautiful, clear, clear stream — and there was a moment when the sun was hitting the water, and I was looking down in the water, and it was so clear, and I can only hear this woman’s voice behind me. I said, ‘This is how I’m supposed to feel. This is what I’ve been waiting to feel my entire life.’”

Ellis has been in an 11-year relationship with a man she met at church.

“The way that I live my life, around the people that I live my life around, I am public about it. I’m very clear about being bisexual. I have a sweatshirt that says ‘Girl Bi’ that I wear everywhere.”

When asked why she had not spoken about her sexual orientation publicly before. She replied by laughing and said:

“Nobody asked. There is an assumption made of me — a presumption made of me. Is it because I’m a Black woman from Mississippi? Is it because I’m older? I don’t know what the mechanics are that goes into them not processing, or them not just being able to believe that in the same way I am Black, I am queer. This is who I am.”