Fifteen years after appearing on American Idol, Sanjaya Malakar has officially come out as bisexual.

The singer auditioned for the iconic reality show as a teenager, making it all the way to the top 7 before being eliminated despite finding a repetitive dissenter in judge Simon Cowell. He was a surprisingly contentious contender for a 16-year-old, to the point where Saturday Night Live even did a bit about it.

Speculation about his sexuality also ran rampant at the time, and a couple years later, when he joined up with I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, Malakar was put on the spot and ultimately denied being queer.

“A lot of people want me to be their gay best friend and I make a really good gay best friend, but I don’t like guys, so it confuses people,” he said at the time.

The 32-year-old spoke about that denial and figuring out his own sexuality during a recent chat on the Adam Sank Show podcast, acknowledging that he now freely identifies as bisexual.

“At the time, I did not not know, which was why it was so weird for me,” he said. “I was raised by women, I was in theater, I had a hard time figuring out how to interact with young boys.”

Malakar said that people telling him he was gay made him feeling like they were “forcing me to make a decision, and to define myself,” which led to him denying that he was into guys at all.

“Everyone [kept] telling me that I’m gay, and I’m like, seven. I’m like, I don’t even have any attraction to anyone, so why are you telling me this?” he recalled.

But that was a long time ago, and self-reflection has led Malakar, who now works as a pastry chef, to a more comfortable, confident place with his identity as an adult. 

“At this point, I don’t care what people know of my sexuality,” he said.

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