Former child actor Brian Falduto says that he wasn’t able to come out until his senior year of college because of the struggles he faced after being dubbed “the gay kid” from “School of Rock.”
Falduto played sassy, snappy-dressing prep-school-student-turned-costume-designer Billy in the 2003 smash.
But he says the role plagued him into adult life.
“I was in so much denial [about my sexuality growing up],” he said on the “Cooper and Anthony Show,” “Think about it: I was in the fifth grade when this movie came out and I was called gay, and then someone told me that’s not cool, so I was just like, ‘Oh, ok, then I’m not gay’.”
And he said that because got the same “message” so often from people who had seen the movie “my denial had to come so often.”
“So I was denying it before I even had a notion of what [being gay] was,” he told radio hosts Cooper Lawrence and Anthony Michaels.
“So by the time I realized I was potentially gay, I was already homophobic towards myself, essentially,” Falduto, who is now an actor, filmmaker, musician and life coach said.
Meanwhile, he said that the movie’s star, Jack Black, is still in touch with him and other former child actors from the cast — and he even helped Falduto fund a music video he made.
“I want to give him a shout out for being an awesome, awesome human,” Falduto said.