A decade after the final hurrah of Sex and the City , Willie Garson is coming clean.

Garson, who played Carrie Bradshaws gay pal Stanford Blatch on the HBO series, said he chose to keep quiet about his real-life sexuality during the shows run and in the lead-up to its two subsequent films.

For years I didnt talk about it because I found it to be offensive to gay people, the actor, who joked that hes never been straight closeted, told Page Six in an interview published Thursday. People playing gay characters jumping up and down screaming that theyre not gay, like that would somehow be a bad thing if they were.

Given how Sex and the City captured the zeitgeist of its time, Garson couldnt avoid media speculation about his sexuality entirely, so he said he came up with a stock response to use in interviews.

I would say, When I was on White Collar no one ever asked me if I was a conman, and when I was on NYPD Blue, nobody ever asked me if I was a murderer, he explained. This is what we do for a living, portray people.

While Stanfords sexuality may have been performative, Garsons kinship with series star Sarah Jessica Parker , who played Carrie, was genuine. In 2000, the actor told Out magazine that he and Parker were set up on a date in the 1980s before deciding they were better matched as friends.