For many Latinos and Latines, Gloria Estefan has been a prominent figure within the community for years. From songs like “Mi Tierra” to “Bemba Colorá,” the Cuban singer has wowed audiences everywhere.
While on Sam Smith‘s podcast, The Pink House, by Lemonada Media, the songstress talked about how she felt truly supported by the queer community. She also talks about her initial response to her daughter Emily coming out to her.
Credit: The Pink House | Lemonada Media
The singer credits the queer community’s support of her music as something that was pivotal in her career
Estefan, who got her start in the Miami Sound Machine, has been a queer icon for decades. Metro Weekly quotes a speech from the singer where she admits that it was thanks to the queer community that her band garnered its first “international hit.”
So, it’s no surprise that while on Smith’s podcast, she echoes her thanks for the LGBTQIA2S+ community’s constant support in her career.
“The fans have been there along with me, and yes, absolutely the queer community. They were on the cutting edge of everything, music specifically,” she states.
Estefan continues, “So they understood my music before it was ever understood by radio or anything like that. They really did open their hearts to us and broke us through in a lot of places. So, it’s wonderful.”
For this reason, she’s never shied away from openly showing her support for the community. Even having drag queens perform as her in one of her music videos.
While discussing her “Everlasting Love” video, Smith asks the “Father of the Bride” actress what inspired the decision.
“Because they do me better than I do me. It’s the bottom line…I didn’t want to be in the video,” Estefan asserted.
She continues, “I was really big by the time we did the video. So I said, ‘I want to get the boys that I know do me out there,’ because there were a lot of people, and we had this whole contest. We narrowed it down to a certain number. It was fab.”
Despite her open support for the queer community, Estefan did experience some hiccups when her daughter came out to her
Both Estefan and her daughter Emily have publicly shared how her coming out has been an ongoing process of learning how to communicate. When Emily first came out, Estefan was worried about how the news would affect her aging mother.
In the series “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” the singer admits to telling her daughter to ease her grandmother into the news.
She says, “I told her just do it slowly. Don’t just sit her down and say, boom. Give her a minute to process.”
In “The Pink House,” she recognizes that there was a lot of miscommunication between them early on.
“I wasn’t surprised, and she and I have gone through a lot of therapy, and we’re still trying to find the best ways to communicate. Thinking back, I think there was a lot of miscommunication,” the singer admits.
She continued, “Em was trying to sit down to talk to me about it. And I would say, ‘Okay, how about now?’ ‘No, I can’t now.’ And then she’d say to me, ‘What about this?’ I go, ‘No, you tell me what it’s about.’ ‘Mom, please? I want it to be in person.’”
Eventually, per Estefan, her daughter texted her the news since they couldn’t meet in person. It was something she confesses didn’t help with communication between the two.
“And the problem with texts is that you can’t read emotion or subtext. So I thought I was being like, ‘Mama, it’s no big deal.’ And she read it in a different way because I think that a lot of her internal struggle kind of got projected in a way, which tends to happen,” she concludes.
Smith’s “The Pink House” can be streamed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
