Lance Bass has opened up about the industry pushback he faced after coming out as gay.
Back in 2006, the beloved talent – who first made waves as a member of NYSNC – publically opened up about his sexuality for the first time in an interview with People.
“I knew that I was in this popular band, and I had four other guys’ careers in my hand, and I knew that if I ever acted on it or even said (that I was gay), it would overpower everything,” he revealed to the news outlet at the time.
Since that fateful day, Bass has gone on to curate a successful career in the entertainment industry – appearing on several TV series, releasing a New York Times bestselling memoir and starting his own production companies.
However, his life post-coming out hasn’t always been a walk in the park.
During a recent interview on the Politickin’ podcast with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch and Dough Hendrickson, Bass revealed that he lost out on a CW pilot shortly after his People interview went live.
“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,” he explained.
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“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.”
Bass went on to say that he faced the same reactions from agents, adding that “everyone just kind of fell off.”
“I had to completely restart and rebrand at that moment. They were right about that, it was definitely a career killer. But, not too long after that, I just saw a lot of success stories in entertainment and I love that… it’s actually a good thing to be yourself these days,” he continued
Towards the end of his statement, Bass revealed that some of the aforementioned casting directors have since reached out and expressed regret for their actions.
“They were like, ‘Yeah, that was really dumb.’ And they’ve actually cast me in a lot of things since, which is really funny and ironic,” the Trolls Band Together star said.
“But I never hold grudges at all. I’m very understanding – I get it, business is business. It sucks, but I never can hold grudges.”
Check out Bass’ full interview here.
The post “I had to restart and rebrand”: Lance Bass says his CW pilot was axed after coming out appeared first on GAY TIMES.
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