Zach Rance, the Big Brother contestant who titillated audiences during Season 16 with his affectionate friendship with fellow contestant (and brother of Ariana) Frankie Grande, has come out as bisexual.
Rance came out in an online conversation with The Mental Health Collection and With Love, Alexa.
Said Rance (transcript via Just Jared): “I've been straight my entire life, I've only liked women. But on ‘Big Brother,' Frankie and I got super, super close. I fell in love with who he was as a person. Super funny, super smart. Good looking guy. As time went on, we got so close that I wasn't really sure if I had feelings for him or not. You know, I've always been straight so it was never a thing to like guys. But after the show happened, him and I did have a relationship that was more than just friends. And he was the first guy that I ever hooked up with. After that night, I was very unsure about the direction of my sexuality because I like women. And after we hooked up, I was very uncertain about what's my next move.”
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Added Rance: “I was like, ‘Wait a second. Is it just because Frankie is someone who I'm really close with?' But the more I thought about being with a guy — you know, making out is one thing, but doing more than making out with a guy is something I just don't want to do. I've never tried it. But I just want to come out and say that I enjoyed hooking up with Frankie and the other guy [a photographer at a shoot] I hooked up with, clearly I enjoyed it, because things went down.”
“We try not to label anything, you know, gender is super fluid,” Rance continued. “So it's hard for me to say I'm straight. I'm not gay either. I just wanted to come out and say that and be transparent and come out and say I am bisexual, even though I do lean more toward heterosexuality. I want to inspire other people to — maybe not experiment, I don't know if that's the right word — but to just be more open-minded, because you can fall in love with someone's mind, you can fall in love with someone's heart. You don't have to just be attracted to the way they look.”
On the show, the couple was even given a portmanteau by fans: Zrankie.
