NEED TO KNOW
- During a Thursday, July 24 appearance on Podcrushed, Nick and Joe Jonas addressed questions that they were asked about their sex lives as kids
- Nick said that they were only one example of a larger problem within the industry, while Joe claimed that people would threaten to report that they were “in a cult” if they didn’t discuss the topics
- Joe also credited Nick’s decision to go solo with helping the band grow and find their own way
Nick and Joe Jonas addressed some uncomfortable questions that they were allegedly asked about their sex lives during their early days in the spotlight.
During a Thursday, July 24 appearance on Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast, the brothers recalled allegedly fielding questions about their decision to wear purity rings and if they were waiting for marriage to get intimate with a partner.
Joe, 35, claimed that some journalists would threaten to write that the brothers, who exploded in popularity as members of the Jonas Brothers, were “in a cult” if they didn’t discuss their stance on the topics. The claim prompted a shocked Badgley, 38, to point out the optics of “asking a 10-year-old about their sex life.”
While he noted that he was not 10 at the time, Nick, 32, said that the industry has come “far” in “just the conversation and dialogue.”
“I think it’s really a good thing,” he said, explaining, “Where it would be like so outside of the realm of possibilities or something someone would do to ask at that time a 14-year-old about their sex life.”
Joe then chimed in, claiming that the questions were allegedly coming up in “every interview,” and Nick pointed out that it was a larger problem.
“It wasn’t just us. It was a whole class of young people coming up,” he added.
As for their purity rings, Joe noted that it was “something in the community of [their] church where that was what everybody else in our were doing around 10, 11 years old.” He said that they all decided that they wanted to “wait for the right person.”
Noting that they were around the age of 15 or 16 at the time, he said that they often did not want to discuss the topic, but that the pressure was allegedly there.
The DNCE frontman claimed that they were asked questions about sex, but also about religion and Christianity. He even claimed that at times there were questions like “What is God?” and “Is there a God?”
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“And it’s on the record … “And you, [go] oh. And so you felt the pressure. I can definitely speak for all three of us here. I felt the pressure of being like, ‘Well, we have to live these lives because we kind of said it in a paper once.’ It’s in print, so you gotta do it forever,” said Joe.
He continued, saying, “Obviously, it would be scary and freak us out until we got to a point where it’s like, f— this. Like, and probably the time we’re like, ‘frick this.’ Because we were like, ‘We can figure out who we are on our own terms.’ “
Joe added that Nick’s decision to go solo, which he described as “a leap of faith,” gave them the ability to go out and make their own decisions and really grow as individuals.
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