Lance Bass "lost everything" after coming out, including CW pilot

On a new episode of the Politickin' podcast, Lance Bass says he observed that coming out as gay was a "career killer" for "all the examples" of entertainment industry professionals he'd seen. And that ended up being his experience as well: “The career definitely changed, and they were right about that. Like, it was definitely a career killer.” In fact, "I had a sitcom, you know, 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,'” he shared (via Deadline).

Bass rose to fame as a member of NSYNC, which broke up in 2002. The singer went on to pursue an acting career, but when he came out as gay on the cover of People magazine in 2006, opportunities dried up. "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," he said on the podcast. "You know, agents, everything, just everyone just 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."

Bass continues to work today, making guest appearances on television shows, doing reality television competitions (including Dancing With The Stars), and doing animated voiceover work. Recently, NSYNC reunited for a new song on the soundtrack of Trolls Band Together. On the podcast, he says he's even worked with some of the casting directors who turned him away after he came out. “They’re all kind of like, ‘Yeah, that was really dumb,'” he said. “And they’ve actually cast me a lot of things since, which is really funny and ironic. But you know, I never hold grudges at all. I’m very understanding. I get it. Business is business is business. It sucks, but I never can hold grudges."