Nate Berkus Would Not Have Chosen to Be Gay

On Sunday, Oprah will welcome her former interior design guru, Nate Berkus, as the latest guest on her Super Soul Sunday series on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Winfrey and Berkus will cover a wide range of topics during the candid one-on-one interview, including his canceled eponymous talk show, his sexuality, and coming out. In a clip featured at People magazine's site, Winfrey asks Berkus about being gay, and he replies with a story about having to correct his father's opinion that being gay was a choice.

"I asked my father:'Do you trust me? Do you respect me? Do you think I'm smart?'" recounts Berkus. "He said, 'Yes,' I said, 'Why would I choose to make my life more difficult — why would anyone choose to make their life more difficult? Do you think I would choose to have this hair? Do you think that I would choose to be 5'9"? I would have been 6'1". It's the exact same thing. The truth of the matter is being gay is the way I was born. I believe this to the core of my being.'"

As the dreamboat-designer-heartthrob to millions of housewives across the country, Berkus'ssexuality was never publicly discussed on The Oprah Show until his partner, Fernando Bengoechea, was killed during the 2004 tsunami that hit Thailand while the two were vacationing there.

Since leaving Oprah in 2010, Berkus went on to host his own daytime talk show, The Nate Berkus Show, which lasted two seasons. Since then he has created a line for Target and written his second book, The Things That Matter, which was his reason for dropping by the OWN studios.

Aside from his new book and home decorating line, Berkus has  been dating Jeremiah Brent, Rachel Zoe’s former assistant, and has moved from New York to L.A. to be closer to his new beau — something Winfrey will hopefully ask about during their conversation. The intimate interview should prove to be a happy reunion, since Winfrey and Berkus haven’t been seen together on television since the launch of his talk show nearly three years ago.

The two-part interview airs on Super Soul Sunday on February 10 and 17 at 11 a.m. on OWN.