CONTACTCAREER OPPORTUNITIESADVERTISE WITH USPRIVACY POLICYPRIVACY PREFERENCESTERMS OF USELEGAL NOTICE
© 2025 Pride Publishing Inc.
All Rights reserved
All Rights reserved
We're so happy to add these celebs to the fam!
Celebrities who have come out in 2025: James Tom, Jade Carey, Paul Reubens
Manoli Figetakis/Getty Images; Jamie Squire/Getty Images; s_bukely/Shutterstock
Coming out can be hard and scary, but living out loud and proud is a great step toward living a happier and more authentic life.
Last year, 54 stars took this step and came out of the closet, including celebs like comedian Taylor Tomlinson, Survivor star Deshawn Redden, Drag Race’s Sasha Colby, and comic Anthony Jeselnik. It’s so exciting to live in a day and age where so many famous people feel comfortable announcing to the world that they’re queer.
So here are all of the celebrities who have bravely come out as LGBTQ+ in 2025... so far!
Teeny Chirichillo
Survivor star Teeny Chirichillo came out as trans in an essay he wrote for Cosmopolitan.
Chirichillo opened up about how much he struggled after the end of his Survivor season and how that played into discovering his own transness.
“I didn’t come back to a spouse or a full-time career, like many of my castmates did,” he said. “I didn’t have a passion to replace the 15-year quest that was getting cast. When I think about my future, there’s a lot of blurriness. But there’s a lifelong accumulation of artifacts that has pulled my identity into focus, inside the museum of my own transness.”
But it wasn’t until the season ended and Chirichillo came back home to New Jersey, that he began to question his nonbinary identity and came to the conclusion that he “had been a closeted trans guy.”
“I don’t expect everyone to reach the same level of ease with my gender that I’ve arrived at after a lifetime of suppressing and then exploring the boyhood in my soul,” he wrote. “But I know who I am.”
Tanner Adell
Tanner Adell at the Billboard Women in Music 2025.Christopher Polk/Getty Another country star has come out and the news has fans singing. Tanner Adell, who was featured on Beyoncé's "BLACKBIIRD" from Cowboy Carter, discussed her sexuality with Out on the red carpet at the Billboard Women in Music Awards. "Yes, I'm pansexual," she told our sister publication.
"It's funny when people ask me my sexual orientation, but I feel like you should be able to hear that in my music," she says. "There's more of that coming."
Yared Nuguse
Olympic runner Yared Nuguse is celebrated a different kind of victory when he shared his truth and his boyfriend with the world in an Instagram on March 29th. Nuguse has rencently made waves in the running world when he took home a bronze medal in the 1500-meter race as part of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
And his boyfriend was cheering him along! "Introducing my boyfriend, Julian," Nuguse wrote on Instagram over the weekend. "Can’t believe we’re already one year in my love."According to Sportskeeda, this relationship reveal also serves as Nuguse’s public coming out. Presumably, the cheeky parenthetical at the end of his Instagram caption reinforces this. "(Don’t act so surprised)," he wrote.
James Tom
James Tom attends Queerty Celebrates Pride50 Gala 2024 at The Edison Ballroom on June 17, 2024 in New York City.
MANOLI FIGETAKIS/GETTY IMAGES
Comedian James Tom may have already come out as trans, but he finally opened up about his name change, new pronouns, and new-found attraction to men.
“I took to faggotry like a fish in water, and with my new gay surroundings came new ways for people to perceive me, and more importantly, new ways for me to perceive myself,” he wrote in a personal essay for Them.
Transitioning was a difficult journey for Tom but an ultimately rewarding one, “I like the person I am, or the person I’m becoming, and I think if I’d done it differently, I would be someone else. It was Jes Tom who nailed the audition so that, someday, in the near future, James Tom will see his name in the credits. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Lara Rajagopalan
Lara Raj at the 54th NAACP Image Awards Nominee Luncheon held at Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel on February 4, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
Brian Feinzimer/Variety via Getty Images
Katseye singer Lara Raj opened up about her sexuality while connecting with fans on Weverse. “I knew i was half fruitcake when i was like 8 so i really was wanting everybody," she wrote on the social media platform, "Honestly probably before 8. Isn’t “half fruitcake” such a good way to explain it without saying it?”
She further detailed that when the show aired, she was “really really scared” because she didn’t know if people would accept her or if it would impede her chances on getting in.
Fortunately, the fandom welcomed her, leaving her to say, “And then you were all so nice about it and gave me so much love and support and it made me feel so confident in who I am, so I love you for that.”
Jade Carey
Olympic gymnast Jade Carey came out on March 20 when she hard launched her new girlfriend on Instagram, marking the first time the gold medal winner has ever spoken publicly about her sexuality.
Carey celebrated the love she shares with her girlfriend Aimee Sinacola, director of creative content for the University of Oregon Ducks, by posting a carousel of photos of the two women together along with the simple caption, “happy” followed by the white heart, lock and key, sparkle, and love letter emojis.
Jenny Blake Isabella
On February 9, Black Lightning creator Jenny Blake Isabella came out as transgender on X (formerly Twitter) by posting the meme “Keep Calm and Yes I'm Transgender.” She went into more detail in caption and asked fans to repeat her desire for privacy, “This is real. I'll have more to say soon. In the meantime, I ask you respect my privacy and especially that of my wife and our children. Thank you.”
Isabella followed her initial post the next day with an update about how rewarding it was to live her authentic life out lout and proud. “THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY: Coming out as transgender on my social media was one of the scariest things I have ever done. The love and support I was shown lifted my spirits and gave me hope. I’ll have more to say soon. For now...thank you,” she wrote on X.
Alexis Floyd
Grey’s Anatomy star Alexis Floyd came out publicly for the first time on an episode of the Made it Out podcast, telling the host that she was pretty young when she first realized she was queer. “I was pretty young, like probably fifth grade. I remember having a crush on a girl and hanging out with her and kissing at a playdate,” she recalled. “Then that just sort of continued through my life where in college, again, like, yeah, I would date trans folks, non-binary folks, like all sorts of folks.”
She also said that embracing her queer identity is something she’s still working on, “I still and something I'm still navigating is this internalized feeling of not being queer enough to like, like to be honest, like this is the first time I'm really publicly speaking about my queerness on a formal platform.”
Brianna Chickenfry
Former Barstool Sports personality Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia admitted that she may be "fully a lesbian” while on an episode of the BFF podcast in January.
“Everyone’s saying I’m a lesbian, which is fine. … I’ve dabbled for sure. I’m thinking maybe girls is my play,” she said. She went on to tell the podcast host that she suspects her past relationships with men may not have worked because of her sexuality. “I think that they’re better, so maybe I really am fully a lesbian, so maybe that’s why none of my relationships with men have worked out,” LaPaglia continued. “But I don’t know. Time will tell.”
Paul Rubens aka Pee-wee Herman
Paul Reubens, better known as Pee-wee Herman, may not have been able to come out to the public while he was still alive, but he was able to speak to fans about his sexuality posthumously through a documentary he participated in creating.
“I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet,” Reubens said in the documentary. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career; I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.”
He later admitted that he felt he had to keep his sexuality secret, even to close friends. “I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” Reubens said. “I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
Villads Raahauge Jensen
Danish pro handballer Villads Raahauge Jensen, who also hosts the Håndbold - mere end bare en sport (Handball - more than just a sport), came out on Instagram in January by bravely writing, “I am gay. Three words that should, in reality, be easy to say, but for many years, I’ve been afraid to be open about it.”
Jensen also feared that they way people viewed him would change once they knew the truth about his sexuality. “Those who know me also know that handball has always been my first priority in all aspects of my life. But the thought that the entire narrative about who I am as a person would change solely because of my sexuality has been something I didn’t dare take a chance on,” he continued.
