‘Elvira’ Cassandra Peterson Reveals She Lost 11,000 ‘Horny Old Men’ Fans When She Came out as Gay
Cassandra Peterson, best known for her horror vampy alter-ego Elvira, recently revealed some of her fandom dropped off in recent months because they stopped seeing her as a sex symbol.
She recounted how she gained a slew of followers when she revealed that she was gay. But then her fan base purged thousands of mainly men who lusted after her sultry persona. She admitted that she was concerned about coming out in her book “Yours Cruelly, Elvira,” but ultimately is glad she did.
Cassandra Peterson said some fans felt as though Elvira ‘lied’ to them
She shared that some of her fanbase changed after the release of her book. “The straight people, I knew that there was going to be some horny old men out there who, who were just not going to like the fact that they didn’t have a chance with me anymore,” she laughed on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast.
“And I hate to tell them they already didn’t have a chance of me anyway,” she added. “It’s funny. One of the things that happened is on my social media, I won’t say which platform. In one day, the day after the book came out, I lost 11,000 people just said, ‘Elvira, you lied to me. I don’t respect you anymore. Goodbye.’ But I got 60,000 new followers the same day. It was funny. I know it was mostly straight older guys who just felt lied to, you know, I don’t know. So you can’t please everybody!”
She was more concerned about her gay fanbase
Peterson was actually more concerned about her gay fan base. “Honestly, I worried more about my gay fan base,” she said. “Because I hope they embraced it, but I was feeling like, what if they think I’m a big fat hypocrite and I was lying to them and, and here I was going, oh my, I love, you know, LBGTQ community.”
“And meanwhile, I’m one of them. And not saying anything about [it],” she added. “So I really worried that maybe some of them would think I was a, you know, big hypocrite. So that, that, that scared me more.”
Cassandra Peterson shared why she wrote the book instead of having a ghostwriter
“When I first thought about writing the book, there would have been the book that was just more about Elvira, how I became Elvira and some of my past and all that,” she shared.
“And I’m a huge reader of autobiographies,” she continued. “And I particularly like the ones that are written by the person themselves, because you can really feel, you get a sense of who the person is. You know, as opposed to having a ghostwriter. And I know that the books, I enjoy reading the most for the books that really spill the beans, you know? Those are the ones that are interesting and that you love and you end up loving the person even more.”
“And so I thought, if I’m going to do it, I’m just going to put it all out there,” she said. “What do I have to lose? You know, I don’t know. People stopped buying my Elvira junk, I don’t know.”
