A lot of things happened while JoJo Siwa was on Celebrity Big Brother UK.
First, there was her awakward interaction with castmate actor Mickey Rourke, who asked if she liked “girls or boys,” to which Siwa responded that she’s attracted to women and that her partner, Kath Ebbs, is non-binary. The 72-year-old Murder Motel star then said something that earned him a formal warning the show’s producers when he told Siwa, “If I stay longer than four days you won’t be gay anymore.”
After other homophobic comments, fellow competitor Chris Hughes called Rourke out for his language. Then, in an episode last week, after a discussion with Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard about how her Big Brother experience was helping her come to terms with her evolving sexuality, Siwa had a revelation. She said living in the house, “made me feel so queer. And I’ve always been afraid of feeling ‘queer,’”… like, I always said ‘lesbian,’ right? But I feel, like, so queer… I think I’ve always told myself I’m a lesbian, and I think being here I’ve realized, ‘Oh, I’m not a lesbian, I’m queer.’ And I think that’s really cool.”
Siwa told ITV’s This Morning on Monday (April 28) that the reality TV lockdown also made her realize that things she was “okay with in my life that I should never have been okay with in the first place.” When one of the hosts asked if she was referring to the relationship with Ebbs, Siwa said, “so many things and that is one of them.”
As viewers know, Siwa, 21, broke up with Ebbs at the show’s wrap party and the singer/actress told This Morning that that was not her plan. “Initially, I was told that the wrap party was something they [Ebbs] didn’t want to attend and then about an hour into the wrap party they decided they wanted to,” she said of the Australian content creator. “And so I was genuinely just going to have a conversation before and then it just led to another. They straight up asked me if I was happy and I said ‘no.’”
During that conversation, Siwa said Ebbs asked if she was happy and Siwa told them she was not. “One thing led to another… and that conversation did take place there,” she said of the 20 days that felt “like four-and-a-half years,” noting that the first thing she wanted to do when she got out was “exactly what you need to do in your life to make it as good as you can.”
Sitting next to Hughes on a couch, Siwa said she is “very happy where I am now” and grateful for having Hughes in the house with her for “support and comfort.” Asked if her friendship with Hughes was a catalyst in the break up with Ebbs after the couple went public in January, Siwa, again putting her hand on Hughes’ shoulder said, “obviously we’re very close,” with Hughes adding that it’s “just a really strong bond between two people which is just a strong friendship.”
Hughes, 32, called their time together in the house “three weeks we’ll remember for the rest of our lives,” arguing that all gossip aside about the nature of their close ties in the house, he thinks you can genuinely have a “soulmate friendship.” Asked by the hosts if she’d like things to get romantic with “gorgeous boy” Hughes, Siwa doubled-down on her pal being a “great guy,” but agreed that it’s strictly platonic and that they have a lot of fun together, but that’s it.
“Life is life and I don’t know any future of anything,” she said. “But I’m really grateful for our dynamic that we have and our bond that we have.”
Watch Siwa and Hughes discuss their platonic relationship below.
