*EJ Johnson rarely speaks on his love life, but during his recent appearance on an episode of Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Facebook Watch talk show, Red Table Talk, he dished on coming out and his dating history.
On Monday’s new episode of “Red Table Talk,” Jada was joined by EJ and his mother Cookie Johnson for a frank discussion about “raising children outside of what is considered the norm.”
As noted by Too Fab, Cookie said she first noticed her son with Magic Johnson wasn’t like most boys at the age of three, when “he started wanting to put on the princess costumes at school.”
EJ said he came out to one of his close friends when he was 15.
“We went to Hawaii once and I’m sitting behind him and his friend,” Cookie explained. “The girls go by in their bathing suits and the guys go by and when the guys go by, they were like, ‘Whoa! Hey!’ and then girls go by and nothing. So I was like, okay, we need to have a talk.”
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“The talk wasn’t you can’t be this, the talk was, ‘Do you think you are? Know that if you are, I’m okay with it,” she continued. “So he answered and said, ‘Yes, I think I am.’ I said, ‘We will love you and support you no matter what.’ But at that time, you can be happy in your room, but don’t let dad see you. So it was all of that.”
Cookie said it “was a little tough” when EJ finally came out to his father.
“My husband is the type of person, he reacts quickly, so everything that came to the top of his head, he just let it out and I was like, it hurt my feelings and I know it probably hurt his feelings when he’d go, ‘It’s not what I wanted for my son and do you realize what you’re saying because the world is not going to like that and do you want to live this life?’”
After Cookie told him his reaction was a little harsh, Magic had another conversation with his son the next day. “[He] just was like, we’re gonna get through this, I just need time and we both just started crying a little bit,” EJ explained. “But then, I moved to New York to go to college and when he came back to visit, he picked me up for dinner and was like … he hugged me so hard, he almost broke my back and then at that point I was like, we’re gonna be okay. I could really feel the love. We’re gonna be fine.”
Dating is an area EJ admits has “always been a struggle.”
“First of all, there’s the celebrity thing. Like, who are you here for, are you dating me or are you trying to date my dad?” he explained. “These men either just want to be there for one thing and don’t want to stay for the real relationship part or they just want to ride the wave and be bougie and bomb and have their picture taken and do all of that. So there’s so much going on. Both hurt, both you end up crying in the corner.”
Watch the full interview via the clip below:
