Ricky Martin has revealed it was his father who encouraged him to come out as gay to avoid teaching his children to “lie”.
The pop superstar officially came out in 2010 at the age of 38 in a letter posted on Twitter, now X, after years of speculation about his sexuality.
Martin said the decision to publicly reveal his sexuality was on the advice of his father – while it was not condoned by the team working with him.
In an interview on Sirius XM’s Andy Cohen Live, Martin said his team told him: “‘You don’t need to share, everybody knows around you, you don’t have to tell the world, your friends know, your family know, why do you need to stand in front of the camera and talk about it?’.
“They didn’t understand the importance of it. Now I see it. I understood before they did how important it is, not only for me, but to be a spokesperson.”
Palm Royale star Martin explained how his father was a psychologist and he told him “Rick, you need to come out”.
“Especially when I became a father, he said ‘what are you going to teach your kids, to lie?’,” Martin said.
Martin is father to twin sons Matteo and Valentino, born via gestational surrogacy in August 2008, while he shares daughter Lucia and son Renn with now ex-husband Jwan Yosef.
The singer and actor said: “When I told my mum when I was 18 years old, she was concerned because she said ‘oh my God, I just don’t want you to hurt. People out there are really cruel’ – and so it took her a minute to accept it.
“But obviously when I did it, I made sure she was on an aeroplane on her way to see me. I did what I did, I wrote a letter and I tweeted it.
“I wish I could come out 20 times, it felt amazing. I started crying like a baby.”
In 2018, Martin told Attitude magazine that he had spent years avoiding even platonic relationships because he feared people would find out he was gay.
“I wasted so much energy trying to manipulate my sexuality,” he said.