Actor Rick Cosnett of The Flash and The Vampire Diaries came out publicly as gay in video posted to Instagram on Thursday.
“Hi everyone … dramatic pause … I’m gay,” Cosnett says in the video.
“I just wanted everyone to know, because I’ve made a promise to myself to live my truth every day, and sometimes that is a really hard thing to do, when you have all these subconscious things you don’t even know about from childhood, and from society, and from just life,” he adds. “I’m sure most of you probably knew anyway. And yeah, that’s actually all I wanted to say. I also have a stye on my eye, which really adds to the drama of the whole thing.”
Cosnett, who is from Zimbabwe, played Eddie Thawne in The Flash, Wes Maxfield in The Vampire Diaries, and Elias Harper in Quantico. He is a cousin of Hugh Grant.
In a post earlier this week, Cosnett posed in a gown and thanked friends for “helping me find and experiment with my self expression.”
“Feels good, and terrifying,” he wrote.