hopelessly devoted

Joshua Bassett’s fans are all asking the same thing: is he okay?

Joshua Bassett in a glittery black turtleneck.
Photo via Getty Images

Disney leading lad and singer-songwriter Joshua Bassett has been through it. When his HSMTMTS costar/ex-girlfriend Olivia Rodrigo dropped the megahit song “Driver’s License” and subsequent divorce album Sour in 2021 (the two were never married, but somehow, it qualifies), things took a marked downward turn for the young actor.

Since then, Bassett has faced near-fatal stress-induced heart failure, a coming out amidst massive social pressure, and a public split from post-Rodrigo girlfriend Sabrina Carpenter. Bassett has documented his season of trial and tribulations in his own music — which, aside from the occasional “Feel Something”, is largely downtempo and melancholy like last year’s Sad Songs in a Hotel Room EP.

Bassett recently told MTV that the number one question he gets from fans nowadays is: “Are you okay?” We get why.

As concerned as fans have been for his health and well-being throughout it all, a recent series of messages from the actor is bringing their worry to a new level.

The first such flag was a tweet sent out a couple weeks ago, in which the actor wrote an abrupt, devoutly evangelical message with no context.

Bassett unilaterally stated that Jesus Christ is the only way:

This message from an LGBTQ+ figure who’d never publicly espoused such fierce religious views made some fear that he’d undergone some kind of Christian conversion therapy since ending his tour in December. However, the message came and went with such little follow-up that the lasting reaction ended up amounting to that video of Trisha Paytas going “Huh? What? Oh, okay.”

This past weekend, Bassett returned to his intensely religious messaging, this time taking to his Instagram Story to assure how ecstatic he now is in Christ.

Among his statement is the claim that he’s “first hand encountered Jesus twice”:

He also asserts that his former tweet saying that “Jesus Christ is the only way” caused the light in his living room to turn on when he typed it.

“For those concerned about me, be sure of this: I’m better than I have ever been,” he concludes. “The peace I feel is far beyond what I thought possible.”

Watching young, beloved LGBTQ+ figures turn hard into evangelicalism is nothing new; even just in recent years, fans have watched both Lady Gaga superfan Staten Harry and viral YouTuber Lohanthony reemerge as Christians and denounce their previous lives.

While some are praising the star’s turn into The Light™, many are expressing confusion and fearing that the star is just facing repression and indoctrination:

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