Colton Underwood’s controversial performance on The Traitors may have ended in elimination earlier this month, but now the reality TV star is opening up about the experience of being an out gay contestant and dealing with homophobia from a cast member and the public.
In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Underwood spoke candidly about dealing with his Traitors costar Michael Rapaport, who claimed, "Nobody in this room would be better at holding a secret than you." Many interpreted this statement as referring to his closeted run on The Bachelor. (The former professional football player, 34, came out in 2021 after that show ended.)
Out Traitors contestants Johnny Weir and Kristen Kish were among those who supported Underwood at that roundtable — and many LGBTQ+ fans also condemned Rapaport's insinuation that Underwood was likely a “Traitor” because he spent years hiding his sexuality.
“I will say, it was one of the first times that I’ve really felt lifted up by the gay community,” he said. “I’ve always sort of struggled to find my footing with who I represent and how people see me. There’s a lot of people who have a lot of opinions about how my coming out was. I still consider myself a baby gay. [laughs] Like, I’ve only been gay for six years. I’m still learning things. The way that people showed up for me [at the roundtable] really, really felt good. Like, I had goosebumps.”
Unfortunately, while Underwood felt supported by some of his fellow cast members and queer fans, he and his husband received death threats during the run of the show, which made him worry about his son’s safety.
“Our world is filled with so much frustration and hate. My heart goes out to them, ’cause there is a part of me that feels like some of it is projection,” he explained. “Where I draw the line is receiving emails with my address and my son’s name in it. Death threats were coming in that were really intense for not only me, but for my husband who doesn’t really love the public eye. From a professional side of things, it’s made it really difficult for us to navigate certain things. When we’re getting death threats, I don’t necessarily want to go to a movie premiere where it’s publicly known that I’m gonna be on that carpet…. There’s a safety thing for me and my family now. So that’s very real.”
Underwood may be ready to put his Traitors experience behind him, but that hasn’t stopped him from being embroiled in more controversy surrounding the show, mainly with costar Lisa Rinna. In January, Rinna called him a “stalker” online. (The comment referred to Underwood's personal history with his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Randolph, who he met on The Bachelor. The pair dated from 2018 from 2020. And after the breakup, Randolph filed a temporary restraining order against Underwood over stalking allegations, which she later dropped.) Rinna later backtracked the comment after Underwood experienced significant backlash.
Colton Underwood at 'The Traitors' roundtable.
Peacock
But the beef didn’t stop there. The two got into things again at the reunion episode Thursday, where Underwood explained that he targeted Rinna — he had referred to her as a "hostage" on the show, a term that rankled her — because he wanted to keep her on as part of gameplay, “to then see if you would flip on another Traitor.” He then expressed frustration that Rinna had brought up his past with Randolph.
“If you didn’t follow my story and what I went through and you watched me as the Bachelor in 2019 and then all of a sudden you’re tuning in in 2026 — I had an incredibly difficult couple of years,” Underwood said during the reunion. “I’ve grown and I’ve changed and I’ve put so much work into myself and into my family. I never really thought the way that I would show up and play Traitors would be linked to one of the most darkest and most horrible moments of my life.”
In the interview with Vanity Fair, he also admitted to being disappointed in his behavior at that time in his life. “And I will always own the mistakes that I made,” he said. “I will always feel guilt and feel this extreme sadness for how I showed up for certain friends, for people in my life. Also fans—letting people down. At that point, people had been sort of invested in me and in my story. So I did feel like not only I let myself down, I let a lot of people down there.”
Underwood explained that he wasn’t in a good headspace when he went on The Bachelor, where he met Randolph, because he knew he was gay and was using it as a kind of “conversion therapy” after having grown up in a conservative area. “The culture that I grew up in, it was not easy to be gay,” he said. “First and foremost, I did the show as this weird version of conversion therapy for me. I thought that it would really help me become straight.”
In January, Underwood also unpacked to Out his reception in appearing on The Traitors: "I'm a polarizing figure, I know that. I'm self-aware to know people either really, really love me or really, really hate me, and that's just part of my journey through reality television."
Underwood also made headlines this week after a source told TMZ that he was the one who noticed that Rinna looked ill at The Traitors premiere party at The Abbey, a gay bar in West Hollywood, and reportedly informed her team to get her help. Rinna later revealed that she believed she was drugged there after she tested positive for fentanyl and amphetamines in her system.
