Soccer Star Robbie Rogers Opens Up About Coming Out and Going Hollywood

Retired soccer star Robbie Rogers – husband of film and TV producer Greg Berlanti – opened up in an interview about facing homophobia in the sports world and attending the Golden Globes.

Rogers, 36, caused a sensation when he came out while still an active soccer player. Though an American, he was playing on a British team at the time, and his embrace of authenticity made him only the second pro soccer player to come out in the UK after Justin Fashnau's 1990 emergence from the closet. Rogers went into retirement not long after, but was soon back on the field, this time as an openly gay player for American team the LA Galaxy.

These days, though, Rogers is – like his famous husband – active in film and television production, with 2022's Harry Styles-starring gay romance "My Policeman," as well as the 2023 Showtime miniseries "Fellow Travelers," on his resume.

It was for "Fellow Travelers" – the story of a decades-long romance between two secretly gay civil servants during the U.S. government's homophobic "Lavender Scare" purge – that Rogers recently attended the Golden Globes; the miniseries was nominated for Best Limited or Anthology Series or Television Film, and star Matt Bomer was nominated for Best Actor in that category.

The miniseries did not win either award, but for Rogers it was a thrill just to be there. "Usually, I am his plus-one to these events in Los Angeles," Rogers told The Athletic (story is behind a paywall), referring to his prolific husband, whose credits – The Athletic noted – include TV projects as varied as "Dawson's Creek" and "Riverdale" and films like "Love, Simon," which Berlanti directed.

"Greg is creating all these shows and has changed LGBTQ content in such an incredible way," Rogers told the sporting news outlet. "But this time, I was walking down the red carpet with the cast – and Greg is there, taking a picture of us."

A portion of Rogers' interview with the publication was posted to X (formerly Twitter), with Rogers talking about the toxic homophobia he encountered in the locker room while still playing soccer and still in the closet. One experience in particular stood out – a torrent of anti-gay rhetoric that his teammates unleashed on the subject of sharing the showers with a gay fellow athlete.

"All the guys started to say how disgusting it would be for a gay man to be in the showers with us, and saying stupid things such as, 'If they're going to shower with us, we should be showering with women,'" Rogers recalled.

"One guy turned to me and he's like, 'Gosh, I just can't even think about the physical act of having sex with another man,'" the soccer legend added.

"And so I'm there, deeply closeted, but at that moment, starting to think about coming out and how that would look and how I would do that."

He realized that he didn't think he could.

"And so I was just like, 'I have to step away from this world, it's not healthy for me to try to do this in this world.'"

Rogers also related how being gay and being a pro athlete put him in a position of feeling like "an outsider" to both worlds, explaining that "when I came out, I was a gay athlete. Maybe people would look at me and say, 'You're not an outsider in the gay community' but it is how I felt."

Things have changed since then – a little. Recent years have seen several top-flight players come out, including Australian soccer star Josh Cavallo, Scottish player Zander Murray, English soccer pro Jake Daniels, and Czech player Jakub Jankto.

But FIFA, which governs soccer globally, has made some missteps in the eyes of gay players and fans by awarding major competitions to countries – like Qatar, which hosted the World Cup in 2022 – that are not only homophobic, but proudly so.

"I feel having World Cups in Qatar or Saudi Arabia can still be a good thing as long as you can still have the conversation," Rogers reflected in his comments to The Athletic.

"But you have to embrace that the world looks different and people will come from all walks of life," Rogers added. "So there's going to be different ways people express themselves – and it might be two men kissing at the stadium celebrating that Colombia scored against Germany. You have to be open to that."

"But to say: 'We're going to award the World Cup to a place that's incredibly homophobic and also it is not going to be accepting of LGBT fans,' then that's irresponsible, not fair, awful and just actually disgusting," Rogers added.

Watch the clip from Rogers' interview below.