Raven-Symoné started acting at age 3 on The Cosby Show. By 18, she was playing the lead role in Disney’s That’s So Raven, the channel’s most-watched show, and touring with The Cheetah Girls. She could feel the pressure of having to look a certain way.
She knew she liked girls, but because of Disney and the Raven-Symoné brand, she felt she had to hide her sexuality. Her only option was to live in the closet. “I’ll always have a husband and a ‘friend’ on the side, so I can be happy,” she recalls.
But then she fell in love, and everything changed.
Symoné talks about her journey on season 3 of “It Got Better,” an inspiring online docuseries co-produced by Dan Bucatinsky and Lisa Kudrow and shared on Lexus’ L/Studio, where people share their coming out stories, their struggles and victories, and how it turned out for them.
The docuseries is brought to you by the It Gets Better Project, a worldwide movement created in 2010 by author Dan Savage. Its mission is “to communicate to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth around the world that it gets better, and to create and inspire the changes needed to make it better for them”.
Previous guests of “It Got Better” include Tim Gunn, RuPaul and Laverne Cox.
She felt “lighter,” Symone said after she finally came out. “I felt like I could go out and not have to put on 17 different hats to be myself.”
It gets better, indeed.
