“When I was 17, it just became something that I didn’t want to be a part of at all anymore. I would do anything to break away or get out of it. People would always ask me, ‘Are you gay?’ and I would be like, ‘I don’t think I’m anything,'” she said. “I was on FaceTime with my girlfriend, and I did a video singing ‘Born This Way,’ and was like, ‘I think I want to put this on my Reels Story,’ because it was just my close friends.”

She continued, “I didn’t realize that no child star as still a child star had ever come out before. The president of the network called me and was like, ‘What are we gonna tell the kids?’ I was like, ‘What do you mean?’” JoJo said that the exec told her to call “every retailer” to “tell them you’re not going crazy.” 

“Everything after I came out changed,” she claimed. “The way they communicated with me changed. The way they worked with me changed. The way they developed my work changed. Everything changed.”

When this story was first reported, a Nickelodeon spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter, “We are unaware of the incident JoJo is referencing, and she was certainly not blackballed by Nickelodeon. We have valued and supported JoJo throughout our incredibly successful partnership, which included a JoJo-themed Pride collection at a major national retailer, among our many collaborations together. We continue to cheer her on and wish her nothing but the best.”