Billionaire Barry Diller is pushing back at all of the “over the top” buzz over his sexuality in recent weeks. An excerpt from his new memoir, Who Knew, sparked headlines and stirred up social media.
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Diller discussed his new memoir during an interview on TODAY, which aired on May 20. This came two weeks after an excerpt from the book was published, where he revealed that he had always been attracted to men until he met his future wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.
“All this closet stuff, I mean, if I have been in a closet, it has been the most brightly lit closet with a glass door that you have ever seen,” the billionaire joked in the interview.
“I understand, kind of, the catnip of media — but all this stuff about my sexuality at my frigging age just seems to me, well, it’s kind of obvious and over the top,” he added.
Diller’s memoir was released on May 20, and he shared the three words his wife said to him before publishing his life story.
“She said to me 6 months ago, or a year ago, when I knew I was going to publish: ‘Just get ready,'” Diller said von Furstenberg lectured him.
“I said, ‘Get ready, what are you talking about?'” he recalled, before she shot back, “You just get ready.”
Billionaire Barry Diller Revealed the Rules He Set For Himself as a Young Man
Diller also dropped the rules he set for his life when he was about 20 or 21 years old.
“I just said I didn’t want to live a hypocritical life,” the billionaire said. “It was in a way, rules of conduct that I just adopted for myself. I said, ‘Well, there are things I will do and I won’t do. And those are my rules.’ And it was adopted because I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. And yet I didn’t want to tell anybody anything. So I said, I have to have rules for that. And I made them up.”
Diller admitted that fear consumed him while he was creating those rules. However, upon reflection, he realized that it was that very fear that ultimately drove his success.
“If you have one great fear … you don’t have room for many others,” Diller reasoned. “And I think that — in a weird way, as painful as the early development was, I think that’s actually a great gift. Odd, crazy-ish gift that I was given, that it allowed me to be fearless in so many other areas.”
Meanwhile, Diller and Diane von Furstenberg had an on-and-off relationship for years. They separated in 1981 but reunited a decade later in 1991. Ten years after getting back together, they married in 2001. Although the couple didn’t have children together, Diane von Furstenberg has two adult children from her previous marriage to Prince Egon von Furstenberg: Alexander von Furstenberg, 55, and Tatiana von Furstenberg, 54.