Disney star Karan Brar comes out as bisexual in powerful personal essay
op-ed for Teen Vogue about his struggles with mental health and embracing his identity.The 24-year-old actor is perhaps best known for playing Chirag Gupta in the Diary of A Wimpy Kid film series, and Ravi Ross in the popular Disney Channel series, Jessie, and its spinoff, Bunk’d.Though Brar has been acting steadily since 2010—when he was still in his pre-teens—he admits it hasn’t always been easy, writing in Teen Vogue about reckoning with the gap between who we knew he was and who he thought everyone else wanted him to be.A post shared by Karan Brar (@karanbrar)In the vulnerable and inspiring piece, the young performer details how his career had strained his relationship with his parents and led him to compartmentalize much of his life. “There was public Karan and private Karan,” he says. “Both were real, but trying to hold them in one body was proving to be too much.”After turning 20 in 2019, Brar set out to begin a new chapter in his life, moving in with his best friends and fellow actors, Cameron Boyce (Descendants) and Sophie Reynolds (L.A.’s Finest).
After a night of drinking, he finally worked up the courage to come out to the two of them, but was convinced they’d ask him to move out immediately.To his surprise, Boyce and Reynolds were incredibly supportive, surrounding him with nothing but love and support:“This was the first time in years that I wasn’t hiding anything from them; instead, they were seeing the most authentic version of me,” Brar writes. “I finally gave up and accepted that they loved me as I am, as I’ve been, and as I’m going to be.
This was a crisp picture of what unconditional love looked like.”Tragically, Boyce died not long after from an epileptic seizure at just 20 years old, and Brar says his best friend’s sudden and unexpected passing threw his “already-fragile sense of self into a tailspin.”A post shared by Karan Brar (@karanbrar)Things only got more difficult the following year as his grief for Boyce was only compounded by the.
