Matthew Scott Montgomery is ready to share his story.
The actor—best known for his role as Matthew Bailey in the Sonny With a Chance spin-off So Random!—opened up about his coming out journey as a gay man. Having grown up with “very, very conservative” parents, Matthew said that he spent most of his younger years hiding his authentic self, going so far as to attend conversion therapy during his days off from work as a Disney Channel star.
“No one knew,” he shared on the Sept. 19 episode of Christy Carlson Romano‘s podcast Vulnerable. “My castmates did not know at the time, so it was kind of a secret.”
Matthew went on to clarify that Disney “had nothing to do” with his decision to seek conversion therapy, but rather he agreed to it in response to his parents’ “nightmare” reaction to him coming out following his 18th birthday.
“You have to understand that in the environment that I grew up in, you’re taught that you deserve to be punished all the time,” he explained to Christy, who’s a Disney Channel alum herself. “At the time, the career stuff was going so well that I was like still in this broken prison brain of thinking, ‘I’m on red carpets. I’m on TV every week. This is too good, I should be punished on my days off.'”
