Mister Rogers Allegedly Told His Costar to Stay in the Closet

Remember when the internet discovered that quote from Fred Rogers suggesting he might have been bisexual? Well, as beautiful as that day in the neighborhood may have been, it’s always gotta rain sometime.

Francois Clemmons, who many came to know as Officer Clemmons in Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, wrote a memoir that is scheduled to be released in May. In the book, he claims that Rogers once told him that he could either live life as a gay man or he could be on the show, but he couldn’t do both.

“Someone has informed us that you were seen at the local gay bar downtown,” Rogers said, according to Clemmons’ recollection. “Now, I want you to know, Franc, that if you’re gay, it doesn’t matter to me at all. Whatever you say and do is fine with me, but if you’re going to be on the show as an important member of the Neighborhood, you can’t be out as gay.”

“‘You must do this Francois,’ [Fred] told me,” Clemmons writes in his memoir, “‘because it threatens my dream.’”

Clemmons says it was this conversation that convinced him to go ahead and marry a woman, La-Tanya Mae Sheridan, and commit to living in the closet. Getting married, he says, was a suggestion from Rogers.

“It felt as if Fred and I were sealing some kind of secret bargain,” he writes.

Unable to live a lie, Clemmons ultimately got divorced in 1974 after just six years of marriage, and began living his life as a gay man.

He remained a regular part of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood through 1975, and continued to make guest appearances here and there, with his last appearance happening in 1993.

Unfortunately, Rogers’ assertion that having an openly gay man on a show for children wouldn’t be accepted was undoubtedly true at the time. Even now, bringing someone like Billy Porter on Sesame Street for a single episode still causes an outcry among conservative bigots.

But Clemmons, who remained close to Rogers throughout his life, says that he forgives the iconic TV star for urging him to stay in the closet.

“Lord have mercy, yes, I forgive him,” he says, according to People. “More than that, I understand. I relied on the fact that this was his dream. He had worked so hard for it. I knew Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was his whole life.”