Colton Haynes almost lost Teen Wolf role because of topless gay magazine shoot

Teen Wolf star Colton Haynes has revealed that he almost wasn’t cast in the MTV teen drama after execs found out he’d been in a gay magazine shoot.

Despite his character being canonically queer in the show, Haynes revealed in his new memoir, Miss Memory Lane, that the head of MTV at the time didn’t want to hire him for Teen Wolf because he did a photoshoot for XY Magazine when he was a teenager. 

He recalled how his manager told him to “stay in character both on and off set” after he landed the role of Jackson Whittemore, a bully who eventually turned into an ally.

Haynes claimed that his manager told him: “Look what almost happened, Colton. The head of MTV almost didn’t hire you because of that XY photo shoot we’ve been working our asses off to extinguish. Thank god Jeff [Davis] fought for you to get that role.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, Haynes said that it “didn’t matter who was on my team” as the message was always the same: “You will not work if you are yourself”. 

Colton Haynes said Davis, who was the creator of Teen Wolf and showrunner on the series, “indeed fought for me”. 

“I was grateful to him and eager not to f**k up the opportunity,” Haynes added. 

While Haynes was openly gay as a young model, he was forced back into the closet when he made his jump into the acting world.

“I wore a slight variation of the same wardrobe to all four of my auditions: a checkered flannel shirt under a letterman jacket I found at a thrift store, and high-top Jordans to hide my lifts,” he wrote. “I kept that varsity style to help butch myself up a bit.”

When he was 17 he’d appeared in XY Magazine, with a shirtless photo showing him entangled in a homoerotic pose with another male model

Haynes wrote that he and his team “spent years sending cease-and-desist letters to everyone who posted by XY shoot”. 

A decade later, he proudly shared the image on Instagram, writing: “Being gay is worth celebrating. I wish I’d figured that out sooner, but I’m so glad I know it now.”

Colton Haynes came out publicly as gay in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2016. 

In the final season of Teen Wolf, his character Jackson revealed that he was dating Ethan (Charlie Carver) after being previously linked to another female character. 

Haynes told Entertainment Weekly that Jackson’s queer identity “makes total sense” as it was the reason why “Jackson carried around that angst” in previous seasons. 

PinkNews has contacted MTV for comment.