After being recently outed by TMZ, Magic Johnson's fabulously gay son, Earvin Johnson III, took control of his press spin in an interview with PR maven Howard Bragman.

On the latter's Web chat show Gwisssues, EJ told Bragman that despite reports to the contrary, the guy he was filmed with isn't his boyfriend, but just a friend who happens to be a boy.

Still, he's not mad at TMZ for blowing him up.

"I always wanted to come into the spotlight," EJ, 20, tells Bragman. "I always had dreams and plans of doing my own thing and creating my own image, so it came a little sooner than I thought it would but this is still something I knew I would be going through and would have to experience."

The younger Johnson came out to mom Cookie at the ripe old age of 14: "Obviously [she] told me that she had known and always would love me anyway," he reveals. "The same thing happened with my dad like a year or so later."

Currently a junior at NYU, Johnson actually wants to follow in his father's footsteps:  not in basketball, mind you, but as a talk-show host.  Let's hope his show is a bigger hit than Dad's ill-fated effort in the late 1990s.

What, you don't remember The Magic Hour? Check out a snippet below.