Lily Tomlin explains why she turned down offer to come out on the cover of Time in 1975
On Tuesday’s Ellen, actress Lily Tomlin talked about being approached in 1975 and offered the cover of Time magazine if she would agree to come out as gay, over 20 years before host Ellen DeGeneres did that exact thing.
“It was a hard decision to make,” Tomlin said to DeGeneres. “I fell down on the side of… probably after what you went through, probably good sense.”
DeGeneres came out on the cover of Time in 1997, and later said she received death threats and a bomb threat after it happened.
Tomlin, 79, who currently stars alongside Jane Fonda in Grace and Frankie on Netflix, was living openly at the time with her now-wife, Jane Wagner, and said she wanted to do things on her terms.
“I decided that I wasn’t going to play their game,” Tomlin said. “I wanted to be acknowledged for my performance.”
And, of course, the always comedic Tomlin added: “I can see in retrospect that was hardly worth it.”
Ellen airs weekdays; check your local listings.
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