Lance Bass is now an out and proud gay man. But during his *NSYNC days, that definitely wasn’t the case.
In honor of the 20th anniversary of the album No Strings Attached, Lance spoke with Vulture about some of his memories from that time. He recalled that he was “super in the closet” and couldn’t even admit to himself that he was gay.
So when his fellow boyband member Chris Kirkpatrick confronted him, he was pretty shell-shocked. While discussing the music video shoot for “It’s Gonna Be Me,” he explained,
“It was a big day for me because it was the first day someone asked me if I was gay. Chris Kirkpatrick sat me down and said, ‘Hey dude, are you gay?’ No one had ever asked me that.”
He continued,
“I was super in the closet and way too young to even know or care what was happening. But I remember getting so freaked out on that set because he caught me so off guard. I’m sure at that point people were wondering — so why don’t you have a girlfriend? It was very blunt. It scared me. I said, ‘No, what are you talking about?’ I wasn’t even telling myself. I definitely wasn’t gonna tell Chris.”
The music video was shot in 2000 and it wasn’t until six years later that Lance would publicly come out in a cover story for People magazine. He said at the time,
“I’m not ashamed — that’s the one thing I want to say. I don’t think it’s wrong, I’m not devastated going through this. I’m more liberated and happy than I’ve been my whole life. I’m just happy.”
He also told People that he purposely didn’t want to come out while *NSYNC was together because he was afraid of what it would do to the group.
“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 added,
“I didn’t know: Could that be the end of *NSYNC? So I had that weight on me of like, wow if I ever let anyone know, it’s bad. So I just never did.”
Today, Lance is a fierce LGBTQ advocate and happily married to actor Michael Turchin. After struggling to conceive a baby using IVF for four years, the couple finally announced in June 2021 that they were expecting boy/girl twins. Lance told People magazine,
“We always knew that if we were going to start the family, we wanted to go for twins just because Michael’s a twin — he’s a boy/girl twin. And he just loved that experience. I always wanted to have a twin, but we’re like, ‘Well, that’s so perfect because now we can do one of mine, one of yours.’ It was a no-brainer!”
The babies are due in October 2021.
In the meantime, Lance is currently one of the hosts of Bachelor in Paradise. He loves the gig so much that he hopes to return to host a gay version of The Bachelor. He told Variety,
“I think maybe it’s the time for The Bachelor to do a gay Bachelor. I think that would be so much fun. And I definitely know a host if you need it. I have not talked to anyone about that, but I would be so down.”
You can catch Lance Bass on BiP on Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 pm on ABC.
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