Samira Wiley is considered an LGBTQ role model, but unfortunately, she was forced into that role by a mouthy co-star.

Wiley said she wasn’t entirely comfortable with her sexuality when she began her role as Poussey on Orange Is the New Black.

“First season [of Orange Is the New Black] I wasn’t out at all,” she admitted on the Nancy Podcast.

The Handmaid’s Tale star said was accidentally outed by one of her co-stars during an interview. The revelation was hard on Wiley.

“Someone from my cast actually during the interview they were talking about out gay actors in the cast…and they mentioned my name, and I saw it in print, and I cried. I cried a lot,” Wiley recalled. “That’s something somebody took from me. You should be able to come out on your own terms.”

The 31-year-old said her OINTB character of Poussey helped her come to terms with her sexuality and become the outspoken advocate we know today. “I wasn’t out in the beginning, and I think falling in love with Poussey, which is a real thing that happened to me, helped me fall in love with myself, as well,” she said.

In April, Wiley spoke on her experiences as an openly gay woman in the film industry:

"This journey of me being comfortable with my own sexuality paired with being in the public eye has been a really interesting and trying [one] for me,” she told Bustle. “It started out with me not embracing who I was before all this fame stuff happened, and being afraid that Hollywood was going to typecast me if people knew that I was gay.”

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