Nick Jonas is on a press tour for his third solo album, Last Year Was Complicated, and so far he’s been talking about sex through a lot of it (gay sex, kinky sex, accidental boners), because he’s older now and no longer a third of a Jonas Brother, nor a virgin, and therefore he’s been having some sex.
A promo tour for pop stars involves unlimited, obnoxious media probing, which innately entails “opening up” about love and sex in a premeditated way that’s principally tied to the artist’s lyrical content at the moment. This is nothing revelatory. Consider how Nicki Minaj both confirmed and rapped about her relationship with her ex Safaree in synchronicity with her album cycle.
In this case, a large part of the material on Last Year Was Complicated concerns breakups, realizations, sex and Nick Jonas’ search for a more meaningful connection with a woman. It’s the same with his fans—“You realize I really like the skin, but could it be much deeper than that?” etc. It’s not that his sex and relationship issues are necessarily less than real. It does mean his deliberate candidness is designed to imply openness—especially for a guy from a religious family who still wants to escape the tween purity-ring landscape.
Sex talk is the most transparently effective approach, as Nick demonstrated with his previous self-titled album in 2014 which involved him grabbing his dick in briefs for Flaunt magazine and saying things like, “Every artist’s real goal is to have people have sex to your music.” And: “Sex is such an important part of a healthy life.” Miguel is, in fairness, never not talking about sex, but had a similar hardcore sex promo campaign for his erotic album Wildheart last year. Zayn Malik, in contrast, welcomes the sexual imagery (in videos, photos) yet remained vague and less revealing with personal sex takes for Mind of Mine, what he called “a very sexual album.” (On Google, “nick jonas sex interview” yields more content than “zayn malik sex interview”).
In January, while promoting his frat project Goat, Nick told The Daily Beast:
“I think that growth is super important in any creative platform and in life in general, and in the TV show I’m doing a lot of drugs and I’m having a lot of sex,” Jonas smiled, “so it wasn’t foreign to me.”
“And I’ve had sex and drank a lot [in real life], so there are parts of this film that are perfectly real in some sense,” he laughed. “But it’s important to take your fans on a journey. And it’s the responsibility of any artist to say, ‘This is what I’m connected to, this is what inspires me, and hopefully you can ask the same questions I’ve asked of myself.’”
And so, on Tuesday night’s episode of Watch What Happens Live, Jonas continued his confessional promo journey by talking about fetishes and spanking with Andy Cohen, who posed sex-related questions for a game called Let Us Fetish, which Jonas’ team most certainly had to approve before the show.
Note that Andy leads into the segment by mentioning Jonas’ cover interview with Entertainment Weekly where Nick offered up a lob quote—“There’s nothing I don’t want to talk about. If someone asked what I’m into, like a fetish, I’d probably tell them”—to set up Andy’s eventual alley oop.
This invitation, of course, syncs up perfectly with any interviewer’s concerted effort to grab sexy pull quotes and give off the impression of a revealing interview. “We kind of like the new, uncensored Nick Jonas,” Us Weekly proclaims, dutifully bowing to the machine (the sex machine). Wake Up, Sheeple. Anyway, Andy had a few questions:
Andy: “Have you ever be into or would you be into watching porn in the bedroom with someone?”
Nick: “No, I’m not into it.”
Andy: “Have you ever be into or would you be into furries?”
Nick: [Plays coy, gives no answer]
Andy: Have you ever be into or would you be into getting spanked?
Nick: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got a firm ass.
Andy: I know you do. Have you ever be into or would you be into getting tied to a bed post.
Nick: Not into it. It happened one time. It did happen. I didn’t know what to do...It was bad.
No foot fetish for Jonas; and he possibly would watch other people have sex in front of him but no public sex himself (“Doesn’t really bode well for me,” he says). That alone is enough to convince his biggest fans that Nick is undeniably sexy, real and personal.
Nick has already proven he’s game for whatever kind of sex talk we so desire, a spin from his early boy band days when kinky stuff was off limits. Now he’s pouring it on thick. The night prior, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, he gave us the all-important celebrity anecdote, which BuzzFeed unnecessarily retold via screenshots.
Short story: Nick got high before the Young Hollywood Awards and had to conceal a boner on stage. It’s a tale he’s never told and therefore big, if true. “I’ve never told this story, for good reason probably,” he said. Wink. “All men get a NARB from time to time. A NARB is a Non Apparent-Reason Boner.”
More than your typical male pop artist—as he and his team are likely aware—Nick has talked about his LGBT following and chosen to address gay rumors in a way that seems strategic enough to warrant suspicion from some. In an interview with The Sun U.K. published in May, he noted that he’d “technically” had gay sex, if you count faking it.
“On Kingdom I have a sex scene with a guy. It is always this thing. Have I, has Nick? No,” he says. “But it’s my lips, it’s my hands, it’s my body, even if I’m playing a character. So technically I have done that.” (Not really, Nick.) He insisted to Complex (in their Feb/March 2016 issue) that none of it was a ploy:
It frustrates him that some people think he’s exploiting the community for his own ends, dropping winking hints about his sexuality either way. “There’s always going to be negativity toward anything that is a positive effort toward change,” he says. “As a heterosexual male, [I am] open and comfortable about loving my fan base, gay or straight, because to me there is no difference, it is my fan base. Your sexual preference does not matter to me and it shouldn’t matter to anybody. I thought [the criticism] was kind of dumb, considering I play this gay character on a gritty show. There’s a gay sex scene. I kissed a man.
Nick Jonas seems like an adorable, charming dude who intends to overwhelm us with his sex talk, not so much in a calculated way but rather playing into the idea of “opening up.” Only to a point. With Complex, he reiterated how cool he is with the personal line of questioning:
“Are you having sex with Kate Hudson?”
“Umm,” he laughs. “You know, it’s interesting. You’re allowed to ask me whatever the fuck you want and I’ll answer it, or not.”
“You’ll answer it in whatever ways it fits.”
Image via Getty