Italian
Lance Bass is looking back at how his coming out affected his professional career at the time.
While joining the Politickin podcast, the former NSYNC member, who publicly came out as gay in 2006, said that, at that time, he was about to film a pilot for the CW. However, things took a turn when he came out.
“I had a sitcom with The CW at the time, and we were about to shoot the pilot and this came out and they were like, ‘We can’t do the show anymore. Like, they have to believe that you’re straight to play a straight character,’” Bass said.
He added, “Every casting director I knew, they’re like, ‘Lance, we can’t cast you because they can’t look past … You’re too famous for being gay now that they can’t look at you as anything other than that.’ So, I lost everything.”
When looking back at coming out in a People magazine cover feature in 2006, Bass described it as a “crazy scary situation because all the examples I’ve ever had of anyone coming out, especially in entertainment, was that it’s a career killer.” He recalled trying to pursue television or acting after NSYNC — Bass starred in the 2001 romantic comedy On the Line alongside NSYNC bandmember Joey Fatone and Emmanuelle Chriqui.
Bass said the decision to come out on the cover was “a scary one” but he did so because he was going to be outed by the press and had 24 hours to do so before a story was written and printed. He said that while things have now improved, at the time people in the business “fell off” and gave an impression of “I don’t know what we could do with you now.”
As a result, Bass said he had to “restart and rebrand.” While noting that he “never can hold grudges,” Bass said that casting directors have since apologized and regretted their actions at the time.
Bass also looked back at the time when NSYNC halted, admitting that he didn’t set himself up for success by planning solo endeavors or taking advantage of any career opportunities because he was waiting for the group to return.
“I was confused for sure. I was such a young person. And all I knew was NSYNC … that was my world, and I was happy that was my world. I thought that was going to be my world the rest of my life,” he said.
“When we decided that the group was no longer, it was very confusing for me because I didn’t know where I belonged and I wasn’t really setting myself up for success because I was just waiting,” Bass said, also noting, “It took awhile to figure out who I was and where I needed to go.”
The boy band reunited for the single “Better Place” — their first song together in over two decades — for the film Trolls Band Together. In addition to “Better Place,” the band joined Timberlake for a song on his album Everything I Thought It Was called “Paradise.”
As for whether the future holds more reunions for the group, Bass teased, “There’s definitely something in the air that we’re trying to figure out. … We’re definitely discussing what the future could hold and what we could do.”
