Nickelodeon star JoJo Siwa is opening up about how she is trying to get a kissing scene from her first major movie, the upcoming Christmas flick Bounce, removed from the film's final cut.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the 18-year-old dancer and singer -- who came out as pansexual and a member of the LGBTQ+ community earlier this year -- talked about how she is excited for the upcoming Christmas-themed movie (her first major role since publicly coming out), but there's one thing that has been weighing heavily on her mind since she was cast: the kissing scene between her character and a boy.
Directed by To All the Boys I've Loved Before's Susan Johnson and produced by screen legend Will Smith, Bounce is described as a body-swapping, Groundhog Day-style holiday film that tells the story of a teen girl named Franny (played by Siwa) who gets "granted a Christmas wish to trade her difficult family for another." Franny has to kiss a boy in one of the scenes of the film, and reasonably, Siwa has her reservations about it.
"I'm madly in love and I do not want to kiss another human," Siwa said about her reasoning, citing her cute, long-distance relationship with girlfriend Kylie Prew. "Especially because it's a man."
Though Prew reportedly says she is fine with the scene, (it is just acting after all) Siwa worries that her young fanbase won't understand and won't be able to differentiate between her character from her actual self, and thusly, will think Siwa is the one kissing a boy, not her character.
"That's what they look at me as, not some character, not some fictional thing," she said. "And so it's going to be a little weird."
"I'm not about it," she continued, staying hopeful that the scene will be removed come the film's release in the near future. "I'm trying to get it pulled so bad. It'll happen. It'll get pulled."
She even took to Twitter to talk more about her optimism and the support she's getting from Paramount (Bounce's distributor) that she won't have to do anything she doesn't want to do.
Back in January, Siwa publicly came out as queer and was met with a ton of public support and outpouring of love!
Then in February during an interview with late-night talk host Jimmy Fallon, Siwa opened up about and reflected on her very public coming out experience and how her relationship with "the most amazing, wonderful, perfect, most beautiful girlfriend in the whole world" helped her find the strength to publicly live her truth. She recounted to Fallon how a FaceTime call with Prew following her dance collab with LGBTQ+ TikTok collective Pride House helped her realize that it was a good time to finally come out of the closet and post her now-iconic "Best. Gay. Cousin. Ever." tweet, despite how hesitant she was at first to do so.
Shortly afterward, Siwa then dedicated a sweet Instagram post to Prew just ahead of the Valentine's Day holiday, with Siwa revealing that the two of them have been in a relationship for (at the time) a month already and that they were best friends beforehand for over a year.
"After being my best friend for over a year, January 8th, 2021 I got to start calling this exceptional human my girlfriend," she wrote at the time. "Since then I've been the happiest I have ever been! She seriously is the most loving, supportive, happiest, protective, and just the most beautiful perfect person in the world. And I get to call her mine! Happy one month to my girl! I love you more and more every day!"
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