Worried he'd alienate female fans, Lance Bass recalls the emotions from hiding his sexual orientation during his NSYNC days.
The pop vocalist and actor discussed being closeted as a member of the 2000s boy band in the Nov. 5 episode of podcast Stories to Tell, where he was joined by fellow NSYNC member JC Chasez. Bass wouldn't come out until 2006 in an issue of People, four years after NSYNC would go on a long hiatus.
"It was horrible as an artist. Horrible. Because you're not yourself," Bass said on the podcast about being closeted. "I look at anything I did with NSYNC — interviews, music, videos–and I don't even recognize myself because you can tell I'm like [covers mouth]. I just wanted to disappear. I didn't want to show myself because I thought people would figure it out if I talked too much."
Bass thought "the band was over" if fans discovered he was gay. "And the sad thing is it would have been," the entertainer continued. "I'm sorry but in the '90s, if you were gay especially in a group like this, your career is over."
Bass added that he'd been "suffering in silence" about being queer since he was five years old.
"I woke up every morning crying and praying to God he would change me straight because I was very religious at the time, too. So, I was always told that you're going to hell, you're done."
The singer found that "the best way to hide" his sexual orientation was when he was asked to join NSYNC, thus blending in with four other members, including Justin Timberlake.
"So this was such a great distraction, and it gave me such an amazing excuse of 'I'm too busy.' 'Oh, you're always in a different city. You can't meet people.' So for a couple of years it was the best excuse," he continued.
In a 2024 episode of podcast Politickin', per People, Bass recalled it being a "career killer" to come out on the cover of People and explained being subsequently dropped from a sitcom on The CW.
"And 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,' he said on the podcast. "So, I lost everything. You know, agents, everything just everyone just kind of like kind of fell off. Like, 'I don't know what we can do with you now.' And so yeah, I had to completely just restart and rebrand at that moment."
