Turns out Disney star Joshua Rush wasn’t just acting when he played a queer character on Andi Mack. The 17-year-old who portrayed Cyrus Goodman on the show just came out as bisexual. Cyrus is the first openly gay main character on the Disney Channel.
Rush posted on Twitter that the first person to respond to his tweet is bi. He then responded to his own tweet writing “first! i win! it’s me. i’m bi. And now that I’ve said that, I have a few things to rant about. There are more important things to talk about than me liking a whole bunch of genders, but I do want to share a few things with you guys.”
first! i win! it's me. i'm bi. And now that I've said that, I have a few things to rant about. There are more important things to talk about than me liking a whole bunch of genders, but I do want to share a few things with you guys.
— joshua rush (@JoshuaRush) August 6, 2019
“I saw so many of you watch Cyrus come out and said “Hey! I can be me! How ironic, isn’t it, that me, playing that character, never had mustered up that courage?” Rush continued. “Instead of feeling the courage to tell you today that I am an out and proud bisexual man because of the character I played for four years, I feel that courage thinking of all of you, who felt emboldened by Cyrus to come out.”
He explained that while he was playing a character on television who was becoming open with his sexuality he still dealt with internalized homophobia in his personal life.
“I stuffed the existential crisis of talking about my sexual orientation into a box in my mind for years. Today, I release it into the world,” Rush tweeted.
He ended his Twitter thread with a couple resources for his followers. He posted GLAAD’s resource on bisexuality saying that it helped him better understand his sexuality. Rush also encouraged his followers to donate to the Trevor Project.