Lance Bass is opening up about his journey to self-acceptance and the challenges he faced while being closeted during his NSYNC days, sharing that it was a deeply emotional process. The 45-year-old former boy band member recently sat down with California Governor Gavin Newsom and podcast co-host Doug Hendrickson on Politickin’, where he discussed the difficulties of coming to terms with his sexuality in the public eye.
Bass, who has known he was gay since he was five, revealed how growing up in the conservative, religious environment of Mississippi shaped his experience. “It was dangerous,” Bass explained, reflecting on how there were no openly gay people in his community. “I heard stories of people being murdered just because they were gay,” he said. “I was taught it was caused by the devil.”
As a deeply religious child, Bass wrestled with his identity, praying nightly to wake up “not being gay” in hopes of escaping what he saw as a sinful fate. “I would cry every night,” he admitted. “I would pray, ‘Please wake up not being gay. Please wake up being attracted to girls.’” It was heartbreaking for him to grapple with such intense feelings of shame at such a young age.
During his NSYNC years, Bass faced even more internal conflict. As a member of one of the biggest musical acts of the late ’90s and early 2000s, he was constantly in the public eye, surrounded by a largely female fan base. He recalled how being in a boy band at the height of his fame felt like “God’s little joke.” He explained how, at a time when he was starting to date and coming of age, he found himself torn between living a public persona and accepting his true self. “I’m like, ‘Oh Lord, I’m gonna have to deal with this. I’m the most public person in the world right now. How am I supposed to deal with this?’”
Bass briefly dated women, including Boy Meets World star Danielle Fishel, as he tried to convince himself that this was “what love feels like.” But eventually, he had to face the truth: “No, uh-uh, this is not it,” he said, acknowledging that he had been deceiving himself.
In 2006, Bass made the courageous decision to come out publicly in People magazine. “It was a crazy, scary situation,” he said. “All the examples I had seen of people coming out in entertainment were that it was a career killer.” To his surprise, the public response was overwhelmingly positive, but that didn’t mean his career wasn’t impacted. “The career definitely changed. It was definitely a career killer,” he confessed.
At the time, NSYNC was on an indefinite hiatus, and Bass was trying to pivot to acting. He was preparing to shoot a pilot for a sitcom with The CW when his coming out forced the show to be scrapped. “They were like, ‘We can’t do the show anymore. They have to believe you’re straight to play a straight character,’” Bass recalled. Even casting directors refused to work with him, stating that they couldn’t “look past” the fact that he was now known as a gay celebrity.
This period of rejection forced Bass to rebuild his career from scratch. “I lost everything — agents, opportunities, everything just kind of fell off,” he said. “I had to restart and rebrand myself.”
Looking back, Bass has forgiven those who rejected him, many of whom later admitted that it was a mistake. “They’ve actually cast me a lot of things since, which is really funny and ironic,” he laughed. He emphasized that he has no grudges, understanding that in the entertainment business, “business is business.”
Bass also expressed his pride in the growing number of LGBTQIA+ artists and actors finding success in Hollywood today. “I love being able to turn on the radio and hear so many LGBTQIA artists,” he said. “It’s actually a good thing to be yourself these days. I think if you’re hiding, it’s harder to have a career in this business.”
For Bass, coming out was a challenging and sometimes painful process, but it ultimately led to a sense of freedom. And though the journey was long, he’s encouraged by how much things have changed for LGBTQIA+ people in the industry, a shift he’s happy to have witnessed in his own lifetime.
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