Kristen Stewart Reveals Why She Came Out as Queer in Her 2017 ‘SNL’ Monologue

Kristen Stewart has opened up about her decision to come out as queer in a very public way.

In February 2017, the Twilight star, 35, announced she is “so gay, dude” in her opening monologue when she hosted Saturday Night Live in a moment that was directly addressing President Donald Trump during his first term in office.

At the time, Stewart was responding to posts Trump shared on Twitter in 2012 about her and her ex-boyfriend, Robert Pattinson, following her cheating scandal with her Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders.

In a teaser for her upcoming interview with ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis, the star was asked about what went into her decision to not only come out, but to do it in that way.

“It was less about sharing the details of my relationship and more so acknowledging that there are people that don’t get full access to being alive because they’re hiding,” Stewart said in the clip.

“I’ve experienced perspectives [and] I’ve had conversations with people I’ve known, loved and trusted and still do, who thought, ‘Your career would go better if you didn’t go outside holding your girlfriend’s hand,’” she explained. “And I was like, ‘So you want me to live a partial life? And you want me to uphold, perpetuate and sustain a system that excludes people?’ And I just can’t do that.”

Stewart explained that there was a time in her career when her dating and personal life were in the public eye for years before she came out. According to her, she didn’t want to “commodify” the details of her queer experience but felt like all aspects of her personal life were an open secret anyway.

“I didn’t want to be part of a comic book. But what I didn’t want to do was hide from the world we live in,” she said. “I want to define it, I want to make it a more open and accepting place. And so I thought it was necessary for me to— I was already holding my girlfriend’s hand in public.”

“None of my relationships have felt guarded because I didn’t want people to know me. I want people to know me,” she continued. “I felt like they did, so I didn’t really need to fill in the blanks. But at that point it felt like a statement that just might unlock other people’s doors.”

Stewart began dating Dylan Meyer in 2019 and the duo married in April 2025.