Neil Patrick Harris: ‘Labels No Longer Define Us’—WATCH

It’s a Sin star, Broadway icon and former star of How I Met Your Mother, Neil Patrick Harris opens up about coming out, sexuality and labels and his experiences with therapy. Talking openly Neil describes how he walked on ‘coals, burning coals’ during one therapy session and how game changing the process has been for him. Plus the star opens up about parenting his two children who were born via surrogate.

Glamour UK‘s Josh Smith interviewed Harris.

Josh Smith: It’s a Sin amazingly touches on the societal pressure that is placed on queer people within communities to live up to certain expectations and that internal battle you have with yourself to try to be a man and whatever that even means. How have you seen, in your own life, that societal pressure change and shift?

Neil Patrick Harris: I agree with you so much and it’s one of my favorite things about watching the series is that you watch – at least I watched it – with two different lenses, simultaneously. I really wanted to watch these kids learn who they were, be voracious, have sex with all kinds of people, grow up and have fun. I was also simultaneously watching it with a lot of caution and trepidation because I was concerned for them.

For me, in my mid 40s, I’m the last generation of lots of labels, it feels. There’s so many examples now of gay actors, gay politicians, gay everyones, that the label itself becomes less important because the saturation point has been reached. When I talk to kids who are a younger generation, like in their early 20s, really a lot of the cast of the show, the labels don’t define them.

It seemed like when I was growing up, if a boy made out with another boy, it meant that he was gay and he had to then process what that would mean. And, was he willing to take that step and acknowledge that he’s gay, G-A-Y? Now it seems like for the younger generations, if they feel like making out with somebody that they can and it doesn’t mean that much. They don’t carry the emotional baggage of what a label may represent. The labels have vanished. We live in a world where there’s great gender nonconformity where you get to specify your own personal pronouns and other people need to respect that. That’s different. That’s been a litmus change that I think is obviously for the better.