Neil Patrick Harris on Beating the Bloggers: How He Came Out in 2006 Before the Internet Could Out Him
Neil Patrick Harris has never been one to shy away from a carefully staged reveal. As a lifelong magician, he understands timing, misdirection, and the power of controlling the narrative. In a recent appearance on the Great Company with Jamie Laing podcast, the How I Met Your Mother star looked back on one of the most significant reveals of his life—the moment he publicly came out as gay in 2006. What stands out in his telling is not just the decision itself, but the calculated urgency behind it. Harris did not come out because he suddenly felt ready to share every private detail with the world. He came out because the internet, in the form of early gossip blogs, was closing in, and he refused to let them write the story for him.
By the mid-2000s, Harris was already in a serious relationship with David Burtka, the man who would later become his husband. The two had begun dating in 2004, well before Harris landed the career-defining role of Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother. When he joined the sitcom, the cast and crew knew about Burtka. There was no secret on set. Yet outside the production, the couple maintained a careful public distance. They often attended the same red carpet events, but they rarely, if ever, posed for photographs together. Harris would walk the carpet alone while Burtka stayed just out of the official frame. Looking back, Harris described the arrangement as uncomfortable and ultimately disrespectful. “If I’m getting to walk a carpet while he’s skulking behind,” he said, the imbalance was obvious. It was a temporary strategy born of caution rather than shame, but it could not last forever.
The caution made sense in the media climate of the time. The mid-2000s marked the peak of a particularly aggressive style of celebrity gossip blogging. Sites thrived on speculation, innuendo, and the public outing of closeted actors. Readers were invited to play along with posts that essentially dared people to “guess which actor is gay and still in the closet.” Harris was acutely aware of this ecosystem. “There were bloggers on the internet that you would go to to read the salacious, you know, ‘try to guess who this actor is that’s gay and in the closet’ kind of comment,” he recalled. “And so there was a fear that I would be the next target on that.” The fear was not abstract. Perez Hilton, the most notorious of these bloggers, had already developed a reputation for aggressive campaigns aimed at forcing celebrities out of the closet. Harris understood that once a blogger decided to make him the focus, the coverage would not be gentle or respectful.
The tipping point arrived in a strange and indirect way. A publicist, asked about Harris’s sexuality, was quoted as saying he was “not of that persuasion.” Harris maintains he never said those words, and he doubts the publicist did either in the way it was framed. But once the phrase appeared online, it took on a life of its own. The denial itself became evidence. People who already suspected Harris was gay found the wording suspicious. Why would someone phrase it that way unless they were trying too hard to hide something? The speculation intensified. Suddenly Harris was no longer just another name floating in the background of gossip posts. He was becoming a specific target.
At that moment, Harris made a strategic decision. He would not wait to be outed. He would not allow the story to unfold through anonymous tip lines and “if you have any information, please come forward” posts that invited readers to share private details of his personal life. “I’ve got to get ahead of the story,” he told Laing, “because I don’t want to be coming out in reaction to ‘if anyone has any information on Neil Patrick Harris, and have you ever slept with him? Please come forward.’ You don’t want those stories.” With the help of his agent and publicist, he carefully drafted a statement that felt authentic rather than defensive or promotional. The goal was clarity without theatrics. In November 2006, the statement was released. Harris declared that he was “quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man, living my life to the fullest.”
He was not without fear. The cultural temperature in 2006 was still capable of producing real hostility. Harris recalled that people sometimes planted “God hates f**s” signs on the lawns of those who had recently come out. He braced himself for a difficult week, possibly a difficult period. The potential for career damage, personal harassment, or public ugliness felt real. “I think at that point, I was a little scared of what would come from that,” he admitted.
What actually arrived was something closer to a shrug. “None of that transpired. There was indifference at best,” Harris said. There were no protestors. There were no lawn signs. The announcement registered as news for a short cycle and then largely faded. In many ways this muted response was a quiet victory, proof that the ground had shifted thanks to those who had come out under far more hostile conditions years earlier. Harris acknowledged that debt. Earlier public figures had absorbed the worst of the backlash and, in doing so, made it easier for those who followed.
Yet the lack of drama left him with a strangely personal complaint. “I was a little bit offended that more people weren’t surprised,” he said. “I expected a little more ‘Wait… what? Him?! He’s so masc!’ So the indifference to me was a little, ‘C’mon, really?!’” The reaction, or lack of it, undercut the carefully maintained public image of the hyper-masculine, woman-chasing Barney Stinson. Harris had expected at least a moment of collective double-take. Instead, many people responded as if the news merely confirmed what they had already assumed. For a performer who had spent years perfecting the art of surprise, the absence of surprise felt oddly deflating.
In the years that followed, the decision proved durable. Harris continued starring on How I Met Your Mother without any apparent professional penalty. The character of Barney Stinson remained a cartoonish womanizer even as the actor playing him lived openly with his partner. The contrast only added to the show’s knowing humor. Harris and Burtka eventually married in 2014 and welcomed twins through surrogacy. The private life that once required careful management on red carpets became, in time, simply part of the public record.
Looking back nearly twenty years later, Harris frames the 2006 announcement less as a triumphant personal milestone and more as a necessary act of narrative control. The internet of that era rewarded salacious speculation and punished those who waited too long to speak for themselves. By moving first, he denied the bloggers the satisfaction of forcing his hand. He also denied them the chance to define the tone of the conversation. The statement he released was measured, proud, and free of apology. In an environment that often preferred scandal, that restraint was its own form of power.
The story also illustrates how quickly cultural weather can change. The same announcement that felt risky in 2006 would likely register as almost routine today. Harris’s mild annoyance at the lack of surprise already hinted at that shift. If people were not shocked, it was partly because the idea of a successful, masculine, mainstream leading man being gay was becoming less extraordinary. The indifference he found slightly irritating was, in a larger sense, evidence of progress.
Harris has never positioned himself as an activist. His work has remained rooted in performance, comedy, magic, and hosting. Yet the decision to come out on his own terms, before the blogs could force the issue, remains one of the clearest examples of an entertainer protecting both his privacy and his dignity in the early digital age. He saw the machinery of public outing gathering momentum and chose to step in front of it. The result was not a dramatic cultural earthquake. It was something quieter and, in its way, more lasting: the simple assertion that his story belonged to him first.
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