Cassandra Peterson is opening up about some of the anxieties she had coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and how it might affect her iconic alter-ego Elvira, Mistress of the Dark — and how it already has.
With the release of her autobiography last fall, Peterson acknowledged that she’s been in a relationship with another woman for 19 years, something that completely blindsided her fans.
“Nobody was ready for that,” she said in a recent episode of Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef. “And apparently we kept it a pretty damn good secret because nobody knew — and everybody was surprised.”
Like many queer public figures, Peterson had concerns about how her fanbase, who had remained loyal and invested in the character of Elvira for decades, might react. But instead of being concerned that bigoted fans would turn their backs on her, she was actually more worried about letting down her own community.
“Honestly, I worried more about my gay fan base,” she said. “Because I hope they embraced it, but I was feeling like, what if they think I’m a big fat hypocrite and I was lying to them? …And meanwhile, I’m one of them.”
But Peterson says she actually wound up gaining 60,000 new followers on one unidentified social media platform the day she went public with her relationship — after losing 11,000.
“I know it was mostly straight older guys who just felt lied to, you know,” she said.
She also joked, “I knew that there was going to be some horny old men out there who were just not going to like they fact that they didn’t have a chance with me anymore. And I hate to tell them they already didn’t have a chance of me anyway.”
