Shay Mitchell, 35, seemed to come out as bisexual through a TikTok trend including a couch on Oct. 5. The Pretty Little Liars star shared a side by side video with a user who said, “If you identify as a bisexual, do you own a green velvet couch?” In the clip, she could be seen dramatically lying down on her own green velvet couch, prompting many viewers to ask what it meant.
@shaymitchell
Although Shay didn’t say she was bisexual, she has been open about being attracted to women in the past. Last yea, her PLL co-star Ian Harding asked her the last time she had been attracted to a woman, in a YouTube video. “Wow. Every day.” she responded. “For me, it’s never been ‘I need to find a boyfriend, I need to find this. I truly feel like I do fall in love with a person.”
She also addressed her attraction for women when talking about her PLL character Emily, who was part of the LGBTQ+ community, in a 2017 interview with Maxim. “People always ask me, ‘You play a gay character? Are you gay? Are you straight? Are you this? Are you that?’” she said at the time. “Look, Emily doesn’t label herself, and I don’t label myself either. I fall in love with the spirit of somebody. Love is love, and that’s something that I’ll keep saying.”
As far as where her love life stands today, Shay has been in a relationship with boyfriend Matte Babel since 2017 and they share two children, Atlas, 2, and four-month-old Rome, together. She shared the first photo of her youngest child back in June and revealed she named the newborn after her late grandmother, Romaine, who died the same year as her birth.
“Losing the most important person in my life in the same year I welcomed my second daughter has shifted everything for me, but one thing remains steady in my soul — I’m certain they spent time together and that brings me peace and joy,” she wrote in the caption. “We’re so happy you’re here Rome, named after my best friend, my soulmate, my ‘person,’ my Grandma Romaine. ❤️” she continued.