Alanis Morissette revealed that she is pansexual in an appearance on the Handsome podcast, co-hosted by Tig Notaro, Mae Martin, and Fortune Feimster. 

As the podcast was nearing a natural conclusion, Feimster said, “I’m sorry for the men that hurt you, but I’m not sorry for the songs that came from it.” Feimster then jokingly remarked, “Did it make you want to be a lesbian at any point?” to which Morissette responded, “I’m pansexual, so yeah.”

After a brief spattering of laughter, Notaro clarified, “Wait, you’re not really pansexual, are you?” 

The ‘Ironic’ singer responded unironically, “I am.”

Notaro was then playfully indignant at the fact that the show’s first-ever in-person guest had waited an hour to make a revelation that would certainly garner mainstream attention. “You’re supposed to come into the Handsome podcast leading with, ‘I’m pansexual’.”

“You know, I like to leave it for the epilogue,” Morissette replied.

The singer-songwriter is globally renowned for her debut album, Jagged Little Pill, which won the 1996 Grammy for Album of the Year. An angsty alt-rock album, it also won Morissette a sizeable LGBTQ+ fanbase.

A longtime LGBTQ+ icon, this is not the first time that Morissette has nonchalantly referenced her sexuality. In an interview with The Advocate, she was asked to elaborate on comments about her sexuality made on Howard Stern’s radio show, to which she said, “What can I tell you about it? I think it’s a beautiful rite of passage for everyone to play with their sexuality at some point, so I did exactly that. And it was great!”

Moreover, earlier this year, Morissette appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast and reflected on her Sex and the City cameo where she shared a kiss with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw. The singer remembered how this moment was written into television folklore: “I reached out to them, and I said, ‘Might it be a nice time for Carrie to experience a lesbian moment?’” 

Recognising the significance of this representation in mainstream early 2000s TV, she remarked: “Anything that opens up and pulls us out of the locked binary is a loving act, I think.”

Whilst pansexual visibility is not widespread, Morissette is not the only high-profile person to adopt the label; Gillian Anderson recently confirmed that she is pansexual too.