Wayne Brady is able to live freely since publicly coming out as pansexual — and he’s ready to celebrate his first Pride Month.
“I don’t give a f–k anymore,” Brady, 52, exclusively told Us Weekly at the Advocate + Out Pride cover launch party on Monday, June 3. “I no longer walk around with shame or fear of blackmail — and that’s the biggest thing.”
He continued, “I didn’t know how I would get past the hurdle of care. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, if I say certain things, will I lose some of the audience that watches my shows, and that watch the daytime shows, and will I lose this?’”
Brady publicly came out as queer in August 2023. He further stressed to Us that he doesn’t feel like he is “cavalier” by saying he doesn’t care how others reacted to his coming out journey.
“I actually care very much because I love my job. But if you can’t accept me as a person, then maybe my humor isn’t for you,” he said on Monday. “Maybe you shouldn’t be watching me [or] maybe you shouldn’t support me. There’s somebody else who spews a little more flavor of hate that you can go and hang out with.”
Brady also is hopeful that his newfound self-acceptance will trickle down into his career.
“I’m hoping [that] when you live your actual life, it’ll reflect into your work,” he said. “So, if I go into things without my hang-up, then it’ll be a shinier me.”
Brady was previously married to Mandie Taketa and they share daughter Maile, 21. He remains close with Taketa and her new partner.
“I [have] chosen this family. I choose to be best friends with my ex-wife, she chooses to love me, I choose to love her partner [and] he chooses to love me,” Brady said. “And that’s our thing. That’s it.”
Their blended family dynamic will be chronicled on the upcoming Freeform reality show, Wayne Brady: The Family Remix.
“Not only do I feel proud showing it, [but] I feel a sense of responsibility,” he explained. “I think that for a young woman [like] my daughter growing up, watching her mother and her father have a relationship that doesn’t work out in the conventional sense, but seeing her father love her mother, support her mother, and her mother support her father, and we say, ‘We are here and we have each other,’ and there’s nothing acrimonious, that there’s love, I think that goes a long way towards her relationship model.”
All Brady wants to “prove” with Family Remix is that “love is love.” The comedian, however, played coy if he’ll be searching for a date on the show.
“You’ll have to tune in to see,” Brady teased.
With reporting by Travis Cronin
