And though his parents, Deborah Divine and Eugene Levy, were accepting of his sexuality and encouraged him to be himself, Dan says he still worried about what would happen if he came out. “Fear of being ridiculed. Fear of being othered,” he explains. “Fear of exposing something that I think a lot of high school students at the time didn’t have the tools to process properly, to make it comfortable for me.”
He only felt comfortable enough to openly discuss his sexuality with others after his mother “invited” him to come out over lunch when he was 18.
In retrospect, Eugene says, “I would have done things so much differently, you know?” The American Pie actor adds that he would’ve tried to be more “involved” in Dan’s life, but acknowledges Dan needed to figure things out for himself, saying, “Not necessarily that we would have gotten any direct answers.”
Eugene adds, “You can only get back what you get back.”
