Jonathan Groff praises castmates for not pushing him to come out

Jonathan Groff is happy he wasn’t outed by someone else and revealed his gay sexuality in his own time.

Groff is "so grateful that someone didn't rip that truth out of me, that I was surrounded by such loving people," he said during an appearance on NPR's Wild Card with Rachel Martin.

"Even when I moved to New York and I was in Spring Awakening with a cast of my peers — and everyone knew probably that Cody, my boyfriend, was not my roommate, which is what I said he was — no one ever really pushed me to declare who I was. They just held me with love," he shared.

"Ultimately," the Tony winner said, "through sort of moving to New York and then experiencing other people that were who they were and watching them thrive and seeing their examples helped me to start to move that from a compartmentalized part of myself out of my mouth to really bring the truth out of my throat."

"And then falling in love with Gavin Creel — RIP, who just passed last year — and then feeling that feeling, and going, 'Oh, wow! This is way better than anything,’" the Frozen star, who came out in 2009, shared.

"And so that was the final kick in the ass that I needed to fully express it and talk about it and release that weight. In retrospect, looking back, I'm so grateful that it was all of those steps to get it there," he concluded.

Jonathan Groff is nominated for a Tony for his role in Just in Time.