Shawn Mendes spoke candidly on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast about how people speculating he was gay when he was a teen deeply affected him and made him question himself. "It was so, so frustrating for me because there were some people in my life that I was very very close to, who were gay and in the closet," Mendes said. "And I felt like this real anger for those people.
It's such a tricky thing. You want to say, 'I'm not gay but it'd be fine if I was gay—but also there's nothing wrong with being gay but I'm not.' You don't really know how to respond to the situation.""I've realized that we just have to stop having to be experts and politicians about it, especially as a famous musician who's a guy.