JoJo Siwa sat down virtually with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show” to discuss her decision to come out as a member of the LGBTQ community and announce that she’s working on a Nickelodeon musical about her life.
Last month, Siwa posted a viral TikTok video of herself dancing to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” which many of her millions of fans took as a coming out announcement. A day later, she posted a photo of herself wearing a shirt printed with “Best. Gay. Cousin. Ever,” a more definitive post that she went over on with her girlfriend.
“I was like, ‘I wanna do a TikTok to ‘Born This Way,’ because it is true. I don’t really wanna be like ‘Yeah, it’s true!’ right away, but I was like ‘I want people to know it’s ok,'” she said. “My cousin had gotten me that shirt; I took that picture like a week before I posted it. I put it on my close friends Instagram story. All my friends know, all my family knows. And then one day I was on FaceTime with my girlfriend…We were talking about it and all the love that came in, and we were both like ‘Technically, I still haven’t confirmed it.’ I was like ‘I kinda just wanna post this picture on my real story.’ And she was super encouraging, she was like ‘Do it.’ I was like ‘All right!’ And I did it.”
The 17-year-old dancer, singer and Nickelodeon superstar said she wanted to start a conversation about coming out and make it less scary for other people.
“My thing about coming out is it can be a very scary thing. Of course, not everyone in the world is going to accept it right now, but there are so many people that are going to accept it right now. And even if there’s a million people that don’t accept it, there’s 100 million that do. And I think that’s something that’s really important,” she said. “Also I was like, ‘I don’t want it to be such a big thing. What am I gonna do? Have a coming out party?’ No, it’s just who I am.”
Siwa also announced that she and Nickelodeon, whom she signed on with in 2017, are working on a musical based on her life, titled “The J-Team,” featuring six original songs by her.
“This musical is centered around my life, and also centered around being yourself and staying true to who you are. Even when the world is telling you ‘It’s not going to happen,’ you’re believing because you’re you,” she said. “And the music in it, I’m so happy about. I have worked so hard on this soundtrack.”
