Home » Latest » Celebrity » What Magic Johnson Did After Son EJ Came Out To Him

What Magic Johnson Did After Son EJ Came Out To Him

5

45 0 Celebrity

9.3

SaveSavedRemoved 5

Magic Johnson’s response to his son coming out became a blueprint for how a parent should react.

When EJ Johnson’s private life became public in the spring of 2013, the story could have gone in a dozen different directions. Instead, Earvin “Magic” Johnson and his wife, Cookie, turned a paparazzi moment into a statement about unconditional love. The clip breaks down exactly what the Hall of Fame point guard did in the hours and years after his son came out — and why his words are still quoted by parents of LGBTQ kids today.

• EJ Johnson, then a 20-year-old NYU student, had come out to his parents privately around age 17, but his public coming out happened when TMZ published photos and video of him holding hands with a male friend on the Sunset Strip in April 2013.
• Magic and Cookie Johnson responded immediately with public statements of unconditional love, saying they were “very proud” of their son rather than distancing themselves from the story.
• In an April 2017 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Magic offered his now widely quoted advice to parents of LGBTQ children: “It’s all about you loving them, no matter that, who they are, what they decide to do… If you don’t support them, who’s going to support them? Who’s going to love them?”

The TMZ Story That Forced the Issue

EJ Johnson didn’t choose the timing. The photos TMZ ran in April 2013 showed him holding hands with a male friend on the Sunset Strip, and within a day the story was everywhere — the son of one of the most recognizable athletes on the planet, outed by a paparazzi lens rather than on his own terms. That’s the moment that put Magic and Cookie in front of cameras and reporters with no script to fall back on.

What they didn’t do mattered as much as what they did. There was no statement asking for privacy, no retreat, no hedging. Magic and Cookie put out word almost immediately that they loved their son and were proud of him, a response that stood out precisely because it arrived so fast and so plainly, with none of the “we’re still processing this” language families sometimes reach for.

The Private Conversation Before the Public One

The public reaction didn’t come out of nowhere. EJ had told his parents he was gay privately, years earlier, around age 17 — long before TMZ ever got involved. Magic has been candid that his own first reaction wasn’t instant acceptance; it took real conversation inside the family before he got to the place where support came naturally instead of as an adjustment.

That gap between the private disclosure and the public one is part of what makes the story land. Magic wasn’t performing acceptance for cameras he’d never met before — by the time reporters showed up, he and Cookie had already done the harder work at home.

“It’s all about you loving them, no matter that, who they are, what they decide to do… If you don’t support them, who’s going to support them? Who’s going to love them?”

From Sunset Strip Photos to Reality TV Star

EJ didn’t just weather the moment — he built a career around being fully himself. He joined the cast of E!’s Rich Kids of Beverly Hills in 2014, a show that lives in the same reality-television world we’ve broken down before when looking at how cast dynamics don’t always stay as warm as they start, and by 2016 he’d earned his own spinoff, EJNYC. His fashion sense — bold, unapologetic, frequently borrowed by his father for style tips — became as much a part of his public identity as the coming-out story itself, the kind of fashion-first entrance into the spotlight that echoes the buzz around whether other young celebrities are ready to step into modeling and fashion on their own terms.

Magic and Cookie stayed vocal well past the initial news cycle, using interviews and appearances to keep talking about family acceptance and LGBTQ rights rather than treating 2013 as a one-time statement and moving on.

Five NBA championships put Magic Johnson in the Hall of Fame. The way he handled a TMZ story about his son on the Sunset Strip is why parents still quote him on Ellen five years later — and why EJ, now a full-blown fashion personality with his own show, never had to spend a day pretending to be someone else.