Ben Platt has publicly spoken about his sexuality for the first time.
The American performer – who’s best known to mainstream audiences for his role in the Pitch Perfect franchise – opened up to PEOPLE about his forthcoming debut album, and how his past relationships with men have influenced its songwriting.
“If I was going to write about people I loved, I wasn’t going to pretend they weren’t men just because I hadn’t talked about that before,” he admitted, before revealing: “I’ve been out since I was 12 years old to my family and anyone in my life. I’ve never sort of hidden that or been ashamed by it. It’s just part of me.”
Ben said his album, Sing To Me Instead, will be his ‘first opportunity to represent his relationships and the men’ that he’s loved. He continued further: “I only wanted to take this leap if I was going to present every part of myself.”
Yesterday, Ben released the intimate, black and white music video to his brand new single, Ease My Mind, which features former Gay Times cover star Charlie Carver as his love interest.
“When we were conceptualizing this sort of loose narrative that we wanted to connect through the videos, there was not really any moment where we had to decide it should be about me and a man as opposed to anything else because it was just, ‘We’re going to represent what this was inspired by,’ which was this man that I was in love with,” Ben said of the video. “So it was really a no-brainer.”
Watch the video for Ease My Mind below.
Ben’s debut album is due for release on 29 March.
Besides Pitch Perfect, Ben has also starred in Broadway productions The Music Man, The Book of Mormon and Dear Evan Hansen. For the latter, Ben received multiple accolades including the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
He’s also received a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album (Dear Evan Hansen) and a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program (You Will Be Found, Dear Evan Hansen).
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