Alanis Morissette said she is pansexual during the November 3 episode of Handsome. The singer shared the information in a conversation about past relationships and the songs she wrote in their wake. When co-host Tig Notaro asked if she had heard correctly, Morissette confirmed it and joked that she likes to leave personal revelations until the end of a conversation.
Fortune Feimster had been talking to Alanis Morissette about the songs that came out of difficult relationships. She offered some sympathy for what the singer had been through, then joked that at least it had given her material. The conversation on Handsome moved from that observation to a personal question, and Morissette answered that she was pansexual.
The answer came late in the episode, released November 3. Feimster’s question had been phrased as a joke about whether being disappointed by men had ever made Morissette consider being a lesbian. The singer took the question in the same spirit and supplied the word she uses for herself. She then added a joke of her own, keeping the exchange at the pace it had before the answer.
Tig Notaro paused to check that she had understood. Alanis Morissette confirmed what she had said, and Notaro wondered why she had not heard it before. There was laughter as they considered where in the episode the information might have come up. Morissette said she preferred to leave things like that for the end. The timing gave the hosts something new to react to just as the interview was drawing to a close.
Handsome is hosted by Notaro, Feimster and Mae Martin. A guest’s answer can be taken up as a serious point or turned into a joke, sometimes in the same exchange. In this case, the follow-up gave Morissette the space to confirm her words. The hosts then responded to the way she had delivered them, with Notaro suggesting that the conversation might have started there if she had known.
Pansexual is the word Alanis Morissette chose. It can describe attraction to people regardless of their gender. In the episode she gave a brief answer in the middle of a conversation, using a term she was comfortable repeating when Notaro asked about it. The details she chose to provide were the term itself and the humour with which she responded to the hosts’ surprise.
Morissette has spoken about sexuality in earlier interviews. In 2008, after discussing experiences with women on Howard Stern’s show, she was asked about those comments again and spoke about exploration as part of her personal life. The recent exchange adds her own explicit description of her orientation. That gives readers a more direct basis for reporting what Alanis Morissette says about herself than they would have from the older comments alone.
She has been married to the musician Mario “Souleye” Treadway since 2010. That part of her biography has been public for years. The topic on Handsome was how she identifies, and the question came up through a discussion about earlier experiences. Her answer was one she could give in a few words, even when it prompted her hosts to stop and reconsider what they knew.
Feimster’s opening observation had a familiar musical reference behind it. Alanis Morissette has long been associated with songs that can put the anger or pain of a relationship into a direct vocal performance. “You Oughta Know,” from 1995’s Jagged Little Pill, remains one of the best-known examples. Feimster was responding to that history when she said the experiences had at least led to good songs.
The podcast conversation does not assign that song to a specific person or identify another recording as a statement about Morissette’s orientation. The connection between the two topics is in the way the question arose. A host was talking to a songwriter about what she had made from painful experiences, and the songwriter took the opening to say something about herself in the present.
The episode arrived in the same week as Morissette’s Butterfly with a Machete: A Rock Traumedy performances at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. The four dates, November 5, 6, 10 and 11, continued a run she had performed in Las Vegas the previous autumn. Morissette co-wrote and produced the show as well as performing in it. People coming across the clip during those dates were hearing one part of a conversation recorded for a different setting, a podcast in which the participants had time to follow a question away from the music that had first prompted it.
For Alanis Morissette, the joke about waiting until the end gave the moment its finish. Notaro had asked how she had missed the information and whether it could have come up sooner. Morissette preferred the timing she had chosen. The remark left everyone with the word she had used, her confirmation when asked and the sound of people laughing together as the conversation moved on.
