Charlie Carver Reveals His Late Dad Was Gay: “I Didn’t Wanna Be Like Him”

newnownext

More than a year after coming out publicly as gay/a>, Charlie Carver has opened up about his late father, who was also gay.

Carver recently admitted to Attitude that when he his father came out to him at age 12, he initially resented him.

“In the way that sons and fathers can have beef regardless of [sexual] orientation, it was just something where I wanted to be able to define myself, set my own rules, and I felt like I had all of a sudden someone who I was gonna be forced to become, and I didn’t wanna be like him,” Carver explained.

The Teen Wolf star went on to say that his father’s openness eventually did help him to come to terms with his own sexuality.

“I think he taught me, in the way that he lived his life, that your sexuality doesn’t define you,” he said.

“It’s an important part of who you are, but he had such a rich life… And I think because I was frustrated by what I would call some of his own internalized shame, that it almost became this challenge to really get to the bottom of that quickly, for me.”

“It kind of propelled me into being louder and brasher and more experimental,” he concluded. “And I think that hurt his feelings sometimes, but I think he was also grateful.”

Carver, who’s best known for his roles in Desperate Housewives, Teen Wolf and The Leftoversalongside his straight identical twin Max, struck out on his own earlier this year to appear in Dustin Lance Black’s LGBT miniseries When We Rise.