This story originally appeared on Them.
Our friends should always be there to help us — and they really supported model and singer Cara Delevingne in a big way.
While appearing on the hit podcast Call Her Daddy, Delevingne said that she “never knew how to ask for what I wanted” while dating men, and that she often ended up “abusing myself to basically make someone happy.” However, Delevingne, who confirmed she is a lesbian earlier this month, said that she learned much more about her sexuality by sleeping with her friends, many of whom were straight.
“I discovered more about my sexuality through sleeping with my friends because there was a safety in that,” she told host Alex Cooper. “That also didn't mean we were gay. You know, we all had boyfriends, but whatever happens when the lights go off, that doesn't really mean anything.” She added, “I started to look back on when I was a kid and I always had this thing with friends of mine, I just think I cared about them more than they cared about me.”
Delevingne had previously alluded to her love of sleeping with straight women when she came out earlier this month.
“If you don’t know this already, I’m a lesbian, and my weakness used to be straight women,” Delevinge said while in a confessional booth at a London Rosalía concert. “Because they weren’t really straight. I don’t think anyone’s really straight. That’s the point.”
Delevingne debuted as a Victoria’s Secret model in 2012, and spoke on the episode about how she was still figuring out her sexuality during her time with a highly-public modeling profile.
“I was in the closet, I was gay, I was also like, am I the only lesbian that’s ever done fucking Victoria's Secret? Like this is a big deal,” she said. “I was having a great time, but also like very confused. I felt like I was an undercover lesbian.”
Delevingne came out as pansexual in 2020 and dated Pretty Little Liars actress Ashley Benson from 2018 to 2020. Despite not coming out until 2020, Tumblr had a great time in the 2010s parsing out the models’ sapphic vibes.
Though she had sex with her straight friends, Delevingne said that it wasn’t until her first relationship, in secret, with another gay woman, that she started to accept her identity.
“I'd never been with someone who was gay either, and, you know, we, she was 10 years older than me, and I really admired her,” she said. “I'd never been with someone who was actually gay and not, we're kind of in secrecy and stuff like that, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is everything.’”
Complicating matters, Delevingne said that the industry didn’t want her to be gay and that she even received a phone call from the notorious Harvey Weinstein trying to get her not to come out.
“When I just started acting … Harvey Weinstein called me, and was like, ‘You can't be gay,’” she said. She said that there had been pictures of her getting close with women and admonished her against that. “He was like, ‘You can't be with women. You'll never be an actress. You'll never be hired. We'll have to find you a boyfriend’ … And I was like, what the fuck is this?” When asked how she responded in the moment, she said, “I just said I'm not gay. I promise you. I'm not. I just, I'm not seeing a boy right now. I really love my female friends.”
Delevingne also spoke about her budding music career in the interview with host Alex Cooper. After signing with Warner Records, per Billboard, she’ll release her debut album this summer.
“Music was always that dream I had, but never believed I would get the opportunity to create,” Delevingne said about her new venture. “Everything has felt like it’s led up to this point and I can’t wait for everyone to experience it.”
