Colton Underwood opens up about 'homoerotic' locker room experiences & his first hookups

Colton shared new details about his coming-out journey!

The Bachelor and Coming Out Colton star Colton Underwood recently opened up about his coming-out journey.

During an interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast hosted by Alexandra Cooper, the Beyond the Edge winner got candid and shared new details about how he navigated high school, his football career, and his appearances on dating shows. Specifically, Underwood revealed tidbits of information that hadn't necessarily been made public on such a large platform before.

Colton noticed he was attracted to men during high school.

Cooper asked Underwood about when he first started noticing his attraction to men. He explained:

"So, at six [years old], I knew I was different. I wasn't like the other kids. I wasn't like the other boys in my class. And I couldn't really fully process it until high school… to really understand that, like, 'Hey, I'm attracted to men and to other guys.' So I don't think there was like one specific thing when I was six."

He continued, "It's so hard, but yet so simple, to explain. Because just like you're straight, I sort of just knew something was different. But I couldn't really be that because, growing [up], I went to Catholic grade school too. Boys were supposed to be into girls, and girls were supposed to be into boys, and that's God's word, supposedly."

Underwood also remarked on how much he's evolved even in the last few years, saying:

"There [were] all these signals from such a young age that, honestly… and I wasn't like this last year when I was first coming out, but I've had now a year under my belt to really sit and figure out why. I feel like I was almost reprogrammed in those circumstances that I grew up in, to really sort of try to rewire me. And it just didn't work."

He reflected on how locker rooms can be both "homophobic" and "homoerotic."

Underwood's football career helped him afford school and, subsequently, college. This made him feel like he couldn't possibly risk losing out on those opportunities.

"At the time, there [were] no other gay football players. And in college, I had a very good career. I didn't want to be a distraction to the team and coaches… and other players in the locker room weren't very friendly. I say, I think, in the show too: the locker room is extremely homophobic, but it's also very homoerotic."

He went on, "It's like slapping in the ass, you know, commenting on each other's d*cks, and then all of a sudden being called a f*g and queer and all these derogatory [terms]. You're like, 'Wait, hold on.' And especially for someone in the closet, you're like, 'This is really messed up.'"

Cooper then asked Underwood to elaborate on his locker room experiences. "Hiding," he recalled. "I wouldn't shower after practice because I was afraid of getting turned on in the locker room or in the shower. And, I mean, I never really was attracted to anybody who I played with, or coaches, so it's sort of silly to even say that. But I wanted to avoid any chance of being outed. So I would not shower with the rest of the team. I would leave, I would change in a corner or change in a stall."

The Coming Out Colton star added:

"There [were] just a lot of things that I sort of did differently than other players because I felt like I had to. I just didn't want questions to start being asked, you know? I ate, drank, slept, and played football. That was pretty much it. I would not party. I would slept through my own house parties in college. I was afraid that, if I got drunk, I would be gay."

Colton struggled to explain why he was still a virgin (because he wasn't).

Over the course of his life, Underwood often leaned into the excuse that he was totally focused on his career in order to defuse questions about relationships and/or sex. However, this became a much more complicated issue as he made his reality TV debut on The Bachelorette.

"I could never explain to The Bachelor fans like why I was a virgin," he recalled. "I never [could] give a good enough reason because… I wasn't. (…) I think people could read through that a little bit, but I never wanted to give them an excuse to call me gay then. Because that's the next thing: when you hear someone's virgin, it's, 'Oh, because they're gay.' Or maybe they're questioning things. And it's like, I can't be the Bachelor and sit in front of America and say I'm struggling with my sexuality like that. There's not that type of space for that audience, and for that position. I knew that, [and] that's why I signed up for it."

Underwood then discussed how he treated his time in The Bachelor franchise as a form of "conversion therapy" for himself.

Colton started hooking up with men when he was 21.

Underwood revealed that his first time hooking up with a guy happened he was 21. "Literally on my 21st birthday," he noted. "But I will say this: I only hooked up with guys when I was single. There [were] never times when I was in a committed relationship."

The Call Her Daddy host asked if Underwood felt nervous about past hookups coming to the surface after he was cast in The Bachelor franchise. "I was terrified being the Bachelor because I was like, 'Oh my gosh, now my face is plastered everywhere,'" he said, highlighting that he was 26 years old when he led his own season of The Bachelor.

Cooper brought up the fact that Underwood's past hookups could've potentially outed him after he became famous, which he agreed was a possibility.

"There was a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights," he explained. "I either got lucky, or I was very careful. (…) [But], to be honest with you, a lot of the men that I hooked up with were, I think, 'straight' in their real life too. They were all pretty closeted themselves. So I don't think there was any man that was going to be coming out to get me because they would be outing themselves as well."

Underwood clarified:

"And it wasn't, like, a ton of men. It was like a few that, you know, they never had my real name. They never… it's, like, how sort of scared and secretive it all was."

He believes that a 'Bachelor' producer discovered he was gay and kept it a secret.

Cooper later asked if, upon being cast on The Bachelor, Underwood worried that producers would dig into his past and would find out that he was gay.

"I was very, very concerned, and very worried," he replied. "I did hear a rumor, though, that one of the producers ended up finding out that I did hook up with a man, but kept it secret, or took care of it. I don't know, I can't verify that. Obviously, that was terrifying too."

Underwood added, "It was also for me hard because I felt a lot of shame [about being gay], but then I also felt shame in lying and deceiving, but then I couldn't really be honest to work through it with people. (…) I do think if I would have been upfront and honest from the very beginning, people would have supported and been okay with it."

Colton revealed why he decided to do Netflix's 'Coming Out Colton' docuseries.

"I went back and forth on whether I was gonna do it this way or not," Underwood said in regard to signing onto Netflix's Coming Out Colton docuseries. "Mainly because… I obviously had a lot of anxiety coming off of the shows that I did."

He went on, "But when I really sat and thought about my life, and what really got me hating myself — hating my actions, hating the situation that I was in — it was because of all of these things that happened in my past. I never had somebody to look at [and] be like, 'Oh, wait, this is what I'm going through.' I think, eventually, that's sort of why I documented my coming out — walking through my upbringing in the church, and then playing football. All of these really masculine, toxic, masculine situations that pretty much just shoved me in the closet for a long time.

"I brought a lot of that on myself," Underwood added. "In no way, shape, or form was this [coming-out] process [a way] to shift blame or focus. I take ownership where I feel like it's important. But I'm also asking and calling on two communities that really have a lot of growing to do, and are sort of the last in our society to really have acceptance: and that's the church and sports."

You can listen to the full episode of Call Her Daddy with Colton Underwood below.