Pretty Little Liars alum Tyler Blackburn relied on his loved ones after publicly coming out as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.
“I don’t think I could have gotten through that time without my family, my friends, because it was a very scary place to be,” Blackburn, 39, tearfully recalled on the Wednesday, March 11, episode of “The Squeeze” podcast, reflecting on his personal struggles in the last year. “I felt like people showed up for me in a really immediate way [and] in a really magical way.”
The actor publicly confirmed in 2019 that he is bisexual after previously struggling with his identity.
“After PLL, I did another show called Roswell [New Mexico], and prior to that show, I had kind of opened up this Pandora’s box about my love life, my sexuality,” Blackburn said on Wednesday’s episode. “It caused problems in my family a bit. It caused problems in the way I viewed myself.”
According to the actor, he started “manifesting physical problems” after coming to terms with his sexuality.
“I started having health issues. I started having gut health issues that were crazy. I had, like, a year and a half of crazy vertigo,” Blackburn recalled. “Then, I found out my spine was broken. I don’t know how, [but] my lower spine was just broken. I had no disc between two of my vertebrae. I had to have full spine surgery. I was just, like, slowly crumbling.”
After recovering from spinal surgery, Blackburn was ready to jump back into acting.
“I was trying all these different avenues; nothing was happening,” he told podcast host Tay Lautner. “My love life was tumultuous. I felt really alone. I spent a lot of time alone, [and] I was really cruel to myself.”
He continued, “Last year, I had to ask for help from my family and friends in a way that I was not [previously] comfortable with.”
Blackburn only started discovering his sexuality in his late 20s, which subsequently led to body-image issues.
“I think that opened up a lot of wounds that I hadn’t really confronted yet,” he acknowledged of coming out. “It then started to spiral into my looks and where do I fit in the queer community and am I likable? Am I lovable? Do I have sex appeal?”
Blackburn recalled that he would treat his body in a “horrific” way in the last year before coming out.
“I would pinch fat every day and weigh myself all the time,” he said. “It was this vicious cycle where it was, like, I would work out but then I would eat really badly because it felt like I needed something to make me feel fulfilled. … For me, I know that based on the way I want to feel [and] the way I want to look, like, I can’t eat lasagna every day or whatever.”
