Sad Details About Hallmark Star Jonathan Bennett

Like many of the "Mean Girls" cast members who found fame in the beloved comedy, Jonathan Bennett was a relatively unknown actor before its 2004 release. Then, he told Lindsay Lohan what day it was and seemed well on his way to becoming one of Hollywood's most in-demand heartthrobs. Instead, he failed to replicate the success of the film that gave him his big break. Acting can be a cutthroat business, and Bennett had certain fears holding him back.

In a 2020 appearance on "The Men of the Hour Podcast," Bennett explained why he views his chosen profession as one of the toughest there is. "It has more rejection; there's more mental anguish than anyone can ever possibly imagine," he said. When it was reported that he was working as a spin instructor in 2013, some fans might have feared that his acting career was over for good. However, Bennett revealed that he had started teaching charity classes after becoming passionate about spinning for a sad reason. "When my parents passed away, I got really into group fitness and spinning to, like, mentally keep me sane," he shared.

Bennett would go on to become a popular Food Network host and join the Hallmark movie family, where he starred in the network's first film centered on an LGBTQ+ couple. Growing up, the gay actor never could have imagined a movie like "The Holiday Sitter" getting made because both Hollywood and some of the people around him treated him as an outcast.

In a 2020 interview with MetroSource, Jonathan Bennett spoke about how difficult it was growing up in an era when there was a lack of LGBTQ+ stories being told by Hollywood. "When I was 12, I never saw anyone that looked like me on television. I didn't see a gay couple in a Christmas movie," he said. In addition to not seeing himself represented in the industry he wanted to work in, he was bullied by homophobic classmates.

For World Theater Day in 2021, Bennett shared the emotional story of how he found solace in his tiny Ohio school's theater program. In high school, he was constantly harassed by bullies who taunted him with gay slurs. His tormentors were also sometimes physically aggressive, and their cruel behavior made Bennett fearful and anxious. On Instagram, the actor recalled some of his agonizing experiences. "He constantly gets pushed into a locker by an a**hole named Justin ... He cries himself to sleep every night and develops stomach ulcers because of the stress and the homophobia," he wrote.

Bennett also shared a video from his high school theater days and roasted his performance, along with his appearance. "He's awkward, his teeth are too big for his face," he wrote. But theater became a comforting, safe space for him — as well as a stepping stone to a career that had to have his bullies seething with jealousy. His glow-up wasn't too bad, either.

Jonathan Bennett was the fifth celebrity contestant eliminated from "Dancing with the Stars" in 2014. "I failed at dancing publicly in front of millions of people," he said on "The Men of the Hour Podcast." However, he'd only set his sights on the Mirrorball Trophy to begin with because his parents were big "DWTS" fans. Sadly, his mother, Ruthanne Bennett, had died two years before he competed on the show. Jonathan paid tribute to her in a 2020 Facebook post. "In all the years of struggle and ups and downs in my life, the one constant was her unconditional love," he wrote.

Jonathan's dad, Dr. David Bennett, also didn't get to watch him dance in the "DWTS" ballroom. "I just lost my father to brain cancer not but three months ago and this was his favorite show on television," Jonathan told The Blade ahead of his season's premiere. He shared that watching "DWTS" had cheered his father up after he got ill.

Jonathan told Glamour that his parents' deaths made it difficult for him to enjoy the holiday season. "Once my parents passed, each Christmas wasn't what it used to be," he shared. But when he began working with Hallmark, the holidays started to look merry and bright again. He credited some of his castmates with helping him rediscover that joy, so it had to be hard on him when many of them left Hallmark for Great American Family.

Jonathan Bennett hadn't yet come out as gay when he joined the "Dancing with the Stars" cast. However, judge Julianne Hough casually outed him by telling "Extra" (via HuffPost) that she had been interested in trying to make a love connection with him until she learned he wasn't straight. It would be three more years before Bennett publicly acknowledged his sexual orientation by revealing that he was in a relationship with Jaymes Vaughan.

It was difficult for Bennett to play a straight character in "Mean Girls." He told the Daily Beast, "I was still living in fear in the closet, of being found out that I was gay." He was warned that this revelation would make his female fan base disappear and his career would vanish with them. "I was afraid that I would lose it all," he told Hollywood Life.

Bennett told "Today" he felt like a fraud during those years when he was trying so hard to be the guy whose poster teen girls would want to be plastered on their bedroom walls. Now, instead of competing with Chad Michael Murray for that space, he's facing off against the Great American Family star in a festive battle for holiday viewership — and he's doing it while playing gay characters. "It repairs the parts of me that were torn and broken when I was having to not be my authentic self early in my career," Bennett said of the welcome change.

The environment in which Jonathan Bennett grew up almost convinced him that getting his own Hallmark-style happy ending was an impossibility. "There's still this little voice in the back of my mind that's like, 'Oh no, this marriage and family thing isn't for you,' because that's what I grew up hearing," he told Them. But in 2017, he announced that he was dating "The Amazing Race" star Jaymes Vaughan by posting a cute Instagram photo of the two of them dressed like Maverick and Goose from "Top Gun."

After Vaughan popped the question in 2020, Bennett told People he had big plans for their wedding. The "Christmas on Cherry Lane" actor loves musicals and wanted their nuptials to be a Broadway-worthy production. "I'm envisioning something between when Elphaba flies in the musical 'Wicked' and the finale number of 'The Greatest Showman,'" he said. He was so excited about making his wedding dreams come true, which made it all the more heartbreaking that someone spoiled his blissful state by denying him his dream wedding destination.

Bennett told The Knot, "For years, we planned to get married at Palace Resorts in Mexico. When we got engaged, the owner said he couldn't marry us because we're two men and it goes against his morals. That was a sucker punch to the gut." Luckily, he and Vaughan found a more welcoming atmosphere at the Unico Hotel Riviera Maya, where they got hitched without a hitch.

In their joint interview with The Knot, Jonathan Bennett and Jaymes Vaughan revealed that they made a tragic discovery about their families' health histories at the beginning of their relationship. "We both lost our dads to cancer and we really bonded over that. We've always kind of felt like they put us together," Bennett said. In 2012, Vaughan told AP that he signed on for "The Amazing Race" because he wanted to help pay for his dad's medical expenses.

There are gene mutations that can be passed down from parents to children that increase the risk of developing certain cancers, so their fathers' illnesses likely made Bennett and Vaughan hyper-vigilant about their health. In October 2022, Bennett demonstrated how he was being proactive about his well-being by filming himself getting a mammogram for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. "After my husband had a scare a few years ago and with cancer running in both of our families screenings are important to us," he wrote on Instagram.

While breast cancer is mainly a concern for women, the CDC reports that one in 100 Americans diagnosed with the disease is male. Some of Bennett's followers praised him for bringing attention to a potential health issue that many men likely don't think about and for showing his followers what getting a mammogram is like. "Thank you for normalizing male mammograms and for reminding everyone that men can get breast cancer too!" one person wrote.