Lance Bass Talks About CW Sitcom He Lost After Coming Out: ‘You’re Too Famous For Being Gay Now’

Lance Bass has had an eclectic career since *NSYNC went on hiatus in 2002. He’s acted on TV in 7th Heaven and Dancing With the Stars, in the movies in On the Line, Zoolander and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and on Broadway in Hairspray, as well as hosting the drive-time radio show Dirty Pop with Lance Bass and training for an (ultimately failed) chance to blast off into space.

But the one thing the singer could not do, apparently, was play it straight for a sitcom at a time when he said that marriage equality was beginning to bubble up in the national conversation. In a chat this week on the Politickin’ podcast, the 45-year-old pop star opened up about his lost bid at a network role after he came out in 2006.

“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,’” married father of twins Bass said about the unnamed show. “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, agents, everything.”

Bass called it a “crazy scary situation,” because, he said, “all the examples I’ve ever had of anyone coming out, especially in entertainment, was that it’s a career killer.” Bass came out in a People magazine story in 2006 and told the pod’s host, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Super Bowl champ Marshawn Lynch and agent Doug Hendrickson that he continued to struggle to find work in Hollywood afterwards, though some of those same people have since cast him in other projects.

“I mean, I knew I was gay since I was, you know, 5-years-old,” he said. “But also knew at a young age that was something I was going to have to hide my whole entire life because, you know, it was dangerous, especially growing up in a state like Mississippi where there’s not one gay person, not one out person at all, because it, again, was dangerous.”

The singer also talked about *NSYNC’s financial struggles in the early days and their battles with late manager Lou Pearlman to get paid, which prompted Newsom to bring up the legislation he signed in September — championed by Demi Lovato — that ensures that child and teenage performers who make online content are protected from financial abuse. “Always have a great group of people around you… you have to trust someone,” Bass said.