Actor Connor Jessup shot to fame for his role as Tyler Locke on the new Netflix series Locke & Key. In a cover interview for Attitude, he opened up about how falling in love with his boyfriend, Miles Heizer, helped him come out as gay. Miles Heizer is best known for his role in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.
Connor Jessup discussed his decision to come out as gay in an Instagram post from last June. “It was something I’d been thinking about more and more, and the reasons that I wasn’t saying anything felt thinner to me every day," Connor Jessup told Attitude. "The excuses that I’d been giving myself for years were dissolving, and I couldn’t think of any reason not to."
He recollected the post and said. “It was more of a relief than I was expecting. I’ve played a few gay characters in the past, and the ways that I would bend and contort to answer questions without actually saying anything, and to not lie but also not to say anything personal.”
He also said. “I would talk a lot about fluidity and sexuality as a spectrum – of course, all that’s true, but I was using it in a way to not have it reflect on me. But also I’m an easily embarrassed person and I can’t imagine that anyone would care about my personal life. It seemed so presumptuous to make a post and assume that people would want to take a moment out of their time to read it. It felt almost arrogant and that held me back, but eventually, I decided that it was easier to do it than to not do it.”
His Instagram post wherein he came out to read. “I’m a white, cis man from an upper-middle-class liberal family. Acceptance was never a question. But still, suspended in all this privilege, I balked. It took me years. It’s ongoing. I’m saying this now because I have conspicuously not said it before. I’ve been out for years in my private life, but never quite publicly.”
Jessup stated that dating Heizer was a huge part of why he came out. As he confirmed that the couple have been together for “about 18 months,” he also said that the relationship is his “first time being in love.”
He said. "I’ll spare you the boring story of how we met because it’s truly unexciting. But I will say — not to get sappy — that the other factor that led to me deciding to come out... was that I fell in love.”
Jessup continued. "When you’re happy, you want to be happy publicly, and it made me think about the whole construction of my life in a way that I had been avoiding. I probably wouldn’t have [come out] if that hadn’t happened."
And recently, Connor Jessup made his relationship with Heizer public in an Instagram post. He shared it a day after Valentine’s Day. “I’m late but I love you, you’re good, you make me better, happy v+1 day,” the caption read.
