Jonathan Groff has shared that he went through a period of sexual abstinence before coming out as gay because he struggled with “a lot of shame” over his sexuality.
The Glee star, 40, who won a Tony Award last year for Best Actor in a Musical for his role in the musical revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, came out at 23 after moving to New York.
From 2009 to 2010, Groff dated the Broadway actor Gavin Creel, whom he attributed with helping him take pride in his sexuality. Creel died, aged 48, in September 2024 from sarcoma, a rare form of cancer.
Speaking to Jessie and Lennie Ware on a recent episode of their Table Manners podcast, Groff said: “I had no sex during high school, I was sort of asexual. I didn’t have girlfriends, but I was just really into theatre and very focused on my craft of acting. And then I moved to New York, and I had my first boyfriend, who was my roommate, and we were together for three and a half years, in the closet the whole time.”
Groff explained that it wasn’t until he left his role as Melchior Gabor in the rock musical Spring Awakening that he felt ready to tell his parents and friends that he was gay, adding that it was in that moment that he “started living my life”.
“But it took a while to come to terms with it,” he said. “When I was 23, I was like, ‘I’m gonna come out, but I still feel a lot of shame, and I still wish that I wasn’t gay.’ It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I really started to love that part of myself.”
Groff came out in 2009 during an interview at a march for gay marriage in Washington, which Creel was leading. “I was so in love with him,” the actor said. “I was out to my friends and family, but the occasion to come out publicly had not happened yet. It then presented itself in Washington DC at that moment in an interview.”
He continued: “I remember feeling like the love that I feel for him is so much deeper than any job I could ever wish to have, and making the choice to choose love over whatever idea of what I would want my career to be, I’m going to come out of the closet.
“It did feel like in 2008 or 2009, that that was the case at that time, that you were making a choice to either be in the closet and have more opportunities in your career, or come out and have less opportunities.”
Creel’s partner Alex Temple Ward confirmed the actor’s death last September following his sarcoma diagnosis in July 2024. Speaking about his ex-partner’s death the following year, Groff told The Broadway Show: “It was such an unbelievable loss.”
