Lance Bass: ‘I Lost Everything’ After Coming Out as Gay

Former member of the boyband NSYNC Lance Bass claimed his career opportunities went up in smoke after he came out as gay in a 2006 People cover story.

Speaking on the Politickin’ podcast with Gavin Newsome, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson, Bass said, “I lost everything,” when the People piece came out. His planned pivot into acting, which Bass said included a CW sitcom he’d been attached to, was killed immediately. “We were about to shoot the pilot and this came out and they were like, ‘We can’t do the show anymore. They believe that you’re straight to play a straight character.’”

Bass was part of the popular boyband from its inception in 1995 until the group disbanded in 2002. The female fan craze surrounding the group was fueled by public perception that all of its members were straight—and so when Bass came out, he said executives told him, “I don’t know what we can do with you now.”

“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,’” Bass said on the podcast. “I had to completely just restart and rebrand at that moment,” he added. Bass shifted towards producing, starting production companies Lance Bass Entertainment and Free Lance Productions, and also has hosted his own podcast and written a children’s book.

Since coming out in 2006, he’s done several walk-on roles and bit parts in films in addition to hosting and making small-screen cameos. Though his acting career didn’t go the way he may have anticipated before coming out, Bass said on the show there’s no hard feelings towards the agents and execs who shunned him back then.

“Lot of the casting directors for sure, they’re all kinda like, ‘Yeah, that was really dumb.’ They’ve actually cast me a lot of things since, which is really funny and ironic. But I never hold grudges at all,” he added, “I get it.”