In a cover interview for PEOPLE, out
singer-actor Ricky Martin discusses how he felt when Barbara Walters
asked him about his sexuality in 2000.
Martin came out gay in 2010 after
dodging rumors about his sexuality for years.
“You could stop these rumors,”
Walters told Martin in the interview. “You could say, 'Yes, I am
gay or no I'm not.'”
“Thank you so much for giving me the
opportunity to express the rumors but for some reason I just don't
feel like it,” Martin responded.
Martin, who is raising four children
with his husband Jwan Yosef, told PEOPLE that he was not ready to
come out in 2000.
“When she dropped the question, I
felt violated, because I was just not ready to come out,” he
said. “I was very afraid. There's a little PTSD with that.”
“A lot of people say, what would you
do differently? Well, maybe I would have come out in that interview.
It would've been great because when I came out, it just felt
amazing.”
“When it comes to my sexuality, when
it come to who I am, I want to talk about what I'm made of, about
everything that I am. Because if you hide it, it's a life-or-death
situation,” Martin said.
Walters has since called the question
“inappropriate.”