For Lance Bass, Coming Out Was a “Career Killer”
The former NSYNC member says casting directors snubbed him because they didn't believe he would be believable as a straight character.
Lance Bass recently claimed his career opportunities dried up after he came out as gay in a 2006 People cover story.
The former member of the boyband NSYNC appeared on the Politickin’ with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch and Doug Hendrickson podcast, and recounted how his plans for his post-boyband pivot to acting were waylaid by his decision to come out.
“It was definitely a career killer,” he said, adding that there has been increased acceptance of gay and lesbian actors, artists, and performers in the eighteen years since he came out.
“It’s actually a good thing to be yourself these days,” Bass said. “I think if you’re kind of hiding yourself and you’re closeted, that it’s harder to have a career in this business.”
Bass, who appeared on the cover of Metro Weekly in 2016, also recounted his difficulty finding work after coming out.
“I lost everything,” he said, noting that he was about to shoot a pilot for a sitcom for the CW, but the project was scuttled because the show’s producers said he would not be believable playing a straight character.
“Every casting director I knew, they were 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,” the singer said. “Agents, everything, just fell off, [saying] ‘I don’t know what we can do for you now.’ I had to just completely restart and rebrand at that moment.”
Bass has since pursued non-acting projects, working as a producer, hosting his own podcast, and writing a children’s book. He said that some of those same casting directors that once snubbed him have since hired him for gigs in recent years.
“[A] Lot of the casting directors for sure, they’re all kinda like, ‘Yeah, that was really dumb,'” Bass said. “They’ve actually cast me a lot of things since, which is really funny and ironic. But I never hold grudges at all. I’m very understanding. I get it. Business is business is business. It sucks. But I can never hold grudges. So even if you piss me off and do something horrible to me, I’m always going to like, be friends again.”
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