Tim Bagley recently appeared on Radio Andy’s “The Julia Cunningham Show” and revealed that he was never given the opportunity to audition for “Saturday Night Live” due to his sexuality. He also opened up about the struggles he faced growing up gay in a society and household that labeled his identity a mental illness.

TV’s Unsung Gay Icon: Tim BagleyThe Julia Cunningham ShowListen on the AppListen on the App

“I was out as a gay man and people knew that they would not hire openly gay people,” Tim said about the “Saturday Night Live” audition process years ago.

“It was Lorne Michaels and Bernie Brillstein had kind of a thing where they did not hire gay people, so I never got to audition,” the “Somebody Somewhere” continued. “All my friends did, and I was always kind of a standout at The Groundlings, but I was out, and so that’s the problem with being out back then was there were no guardrails. I mean, if somebody didn’t want to have you on their show, they just couldn’t, I don’t know. They weren’t trying to seek out, you know, LGBTQ people back then.”

Tim also reflected on trying to “not be gay” early in his career.

“As a young gay man, I went through lots of different modalities and ways to try not to be gay,” he said. “I took myself to conversion therapy. I went to a sex surrogate. I did all kinds of things to try to not be gay, and then, you know, at one point, it was a sex surrogate that she pulled down the DSM-III, which is the psychology bible, and says, “You know, it’s been taken out of this book as a mental illness. It’s no longer considered a mental disorder,” and I guess that happened around 1975 and you know, I moved out here in ’76, but nobody told me that it wasn’t a mental disorder.”

Stream Tim Bagley’s full interview with Spike on the SiriusXM app.

“The Julia Cunningham Show” is a live, one-hour pop culture and entertainment show airing weekdays at 3pm ET/12pm PT from the SiriusXM LA Studios. Stream previous episodes anytime on the SiriusXM app.