Moana star Auli’i Cravalho reflects on reaction to her coming out as bisexual

Moana star Auli’i Cravalho has reflected on the reaction to her coming out as bisexual.

The Disney actor and singer came out on TikTok in April 2020 but didn’t expect the wave of media attention that followed.

“The funniest part to me was that I had girlfriends in high school,” Cravalho, then 19, told Entertainment Weekly. “I think girls are great but I wouldn’t think it was necessary to come out.”

Cravalho, currently starring alongside Reneé Rapp in Mean Girls, said that after coming out, she received numerous messages of support from people she “hadn’t talked to in a long time”.

Among the messages were: “Wow, that’s really great. I wouldn’t have the confidence to come out like you did in a TikTok, but hey, way to be real Gen-Z about it and push forward into the future.”

While proud to be bisexual, and delighted by the positive response she received, Cravalho admitted to having a lot to learn about other LGBT+ identities.

“I still sometimes slip up even with my friends, of integrating ‘they/them’ into sentences, because I’m so used to this binary of ‘he or she’,” the star said. “I’m glad these terms are being used in film because that’s going to help me and help others use it in their daily lives.”

Cravalho says her sexuality is something ‘joyful’

Now 23, Cravalho also spoke of her pride at being offered gay and bisexual roles since she came out.

“I’m like: ‘Oh, finally, this next generation is going to be so much more inclusive’. If you’re playing someone who is part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum, that isn’t just the storyline. There’s so much more to them.

“We are straight-A students. We are avid readers. We have these wild imaginations. We don’t know what the heck we’re doing.

“But don’t just show us in the light of ‘my sexuality is this burden’, because it’s not. It is so joyful.”

Cravalho came out on TikTok by lip-syncing to Eminem’s “Those Kinda Nights”, which includes the lyric: “Seriously though, jokes aside, how you doin? You straight? She said: ‘No, I’m bi’.”

She was quickly met with an outpouring of love from queer fans, with many praising her for the low-key moment.