Mr Beast's trans sidekick Chris Tyson claims his old self is 'dead' after coming out in April

On Friday, Chris Tyson, known as the sidekick of popular children’s YouTuber Mr Beast and now known as Kristy, appeared in his first interview since coming out as transgender in April.

Speaking on taking hormones, Tyson told podcast host Anthony Padilla that after two weeks, "I just started having a mental clarity that it felt like a fog that had been around me just went away and I could see things clearly and I could see things clearly, I could feel confident in who I was, I knew who I was finally, surely, truly without a shadow of a doubt and that is what really saved my life."

Tyson said that as early as 2017, "I started gaining weight, I got really depressed because I pretty much thought that there was no way I was going to be able to transition ever and I was just going to have to keep marching forward in a life I didn’t want to live and I was just gonna have to keep doing that until I couldn’t do it anymore."

Tyson said he felt "internalized transphobia" and "hatred" towards himself, and he "ran away, I pretended I didn’t exist, multiple times I threw away every single pair of clothes I ever owned, I went to conversion therapy."

"It wasn’t until I started taking HRT that I was like this is not a curse, it’s a blessing, like, I can finally be myself."

Tyson said that at the age of six he went into his sisters’ room, grabbed stuff from the closet, went back to his room and locked the door, and watched an episode of Arthur that featured ballerinas.

"I just pretended to be a ballerina and danced around my room and from that moment on I was like I don’t know what this is but I know I need to hide it because I don’t think people — I don’t remember exactly what made me hide it at such a young age" he said, adding that he grew up in a "very religious" area.

When asked if he feels like "the old Chris" is "dead," Tyson said, "dead. Gone."

Speaking in regards to Jimmy, the real name of Mr. Beast, Tyson said, "It was kind of weird to see people be like 'oh, now Jimmy’s put in between a rock and a hard place where he obviously doesn’t want to support Chris but the left would be so mad if he didn’t' and I’m like, all these speculation, all these crazy things, I told Jimmy like seven years ago."

Tyson said that one night he walked out dressed as a woman and bumped into Mr. Beast, but the two didn’t speak about the subject.

Tyson said around a year ago he removed the "guy" portion from his Twitter bio, and was paranoid that someone would notice and begin to question whether Tyson was transgender.

On March 28, Tyson tweeted that he and his wife Katie had been separated for around a year, with Tyson coming out in April. The two were married in 2018, though they were together prior to that, and have a 3-year-old child.

"For a little over a year now me and Katie have been separated. We are finalizing things soon but these things take time. We like to keep our personal lives private, which a lot of people don’t understand because we share so much, but this is the only time I want to discuss it."