“Matilda” star Mara Wilson came out as bisexual in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016 but says she now regrets the timing of her announcement.
Wilson, 30, spoke with Lambda Legal about how she received backlash for coming out after the tragedy.
“I often wish that I hadn’t done it then. Because I got accused of taking advantage of a tragedy for personal attention,” Wilson says. “Now clearly I like attention, but I am not so callous as to make a tragedy about myself, my life and my story. That isn’t what I was going for.”
She continued on that the reason she waited so long to come out was because of the negative stereotypes of bisexuals.
‘”One of the reasons I didn’t come out for a very long time was because I grew up hearing that bisexual girls were ‘crazy.’ I heard that all the time. I heard that bisexual girls were “crazy,” they were greedy, they were selfish and they caused drama. They were the worst. They wanted attention.” Wilson says.
“When you think of bisexuals, you think of villainy,” she added. “You think of people using their sexuality to get what they want, using other people and hurting other people. Or just having a lot of sex, and …if you are ‘promiscuous,’ that is seen as being inherently a bad thing.”
