Everything Julianne Hough Has Said About Her Sexuality

Julianne Hough’s sexuality isn’t as black-and-white as it seems. Brooks Laich knew that before their split. Hough spent her late 20s and early 30s tapping into her authentic self. In her journey, she discovered her sexuality was more fluid than what she had previously allowed herself to believe. Hough involved her then-husband in the process. “I [told him], ‘You know I’m not straight, right?’ And he was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ I was like, ‘I’m not. But I choose to be with you,’” she told Women’s Health in 2019.

Though it was the first time Hough addressed her sexuality, she never meant to effectively come out. “I didn’t really have a moment of like, ‘I’m going to do this.’ It just was,” Hough told the New York Post in 2022. “I just said something and, you know, it just came out that way.” In the interview, Hough shared she identifies as queer. Hough’s still working to discover the whole truth about herself and is enjoying the person she’s discovering.

And she doesn’t think her transformation disavows who she was. “I’ve always been the girl next door, all-American sweetheart. And that’s a version and a part of me, but it’s not all of who I am, and I didn’t even know that about me,” she told People in 2019. “So the last few years have been about me picking up all parts of who I am and the parts that I’ve suppressed over probably 25 years.”