Ricky Martin still carries a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder from that time journalist Barbara Walters tried to out him on national television 10 years before he was ready.
“When she dropped the question, I felt violated because I was just not ready to come out. I was very afraid,” the pop star told People in an exclusive interview for its second annual Pride issue, published Wednesday. “There’s a little PTSD with that.”
The 2000 interview was famous for the way it put Martin, then 28, on the spot. Rumors had been swirling, especially since his breakout hit “Livin’ La Vida Loca” shook up the Grammys in 1999. Publicly, he had only dated women.
“You know, you could stop these rumors,” Walters said, as they faced each other in an idyllic beach setting. “You could say, as many artists have, ‘Yes I am gay,’ or you could say, ‘No I’m not.’ “
“I know,” Martin replied, “but for some reason… I just don’t feel like it.”
Though Walters had been doing her part as an intrepid journalist determined to get the scoop, she years later — the same year Martin came out publicly, in 2010 — admitted she had crossed a line, even labeling the move her one regret.
“In 2000, I pushed Ricky Martin very hard to admit if he was gay or not, and the way he refused to do it made everyone decide that he was,” the now-retired Walters, 91, told The Toronto Star
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in 2010. “A lot of people say that destroyed his career, and when I think back on it now, I feel it was an inappropriate question.”Nowadays Martin’s career is well back on track with a new album; he has four children and a loving husband, and he is gracing the cover of People’s Pride issue. He is a man with “no secrets,” he said.
While he doesn’t regret holding back during that Walters interview, he confessed he does sometimes wonder what if.
“A lot of people say, what would you do differently?” he mused to People. “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 comes 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.”