Lance Bass says his CW pilot was canceled after he came out

Lance Bass reflects on how coming out led to the cancellation of a CW pilot he was supposed to be in.

The 45-year-old singer revealed that he experienced some professional setbacks after coming out publicly with his sexuality, noting that he “lost everything” after sharing his story. (Bass appeared in a July 2006 cover story people.)

“It was a crazy scary situation because all the examples I’ve had of someone coming out, especially in entertainment, is that it’s a career killer,” Bass revealed during the Tuesday, Dec. 3 episode.Politician‘” podcast.

He told the hosts Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch and Doug Hendrickson“The career has definitely changed and they were right about that. It was definitely a career killer.

Although Bass had several acting gigs during his NSYNC days – including a guest appearance on an episode of 7th heaven in the year 2000 and starring in the 2001 romantic comedy, On line – on Finding Prince Charming the host wanted to continue his career after the boy band went on hiatus in 2002

“I had a sitcom, you know, with The CW at the time,” he said. “We were going to shoot the pilot and it came out and they said, ‘We can’t do the show anymore.’ For example, they have to believe you are straight to play a straight character.

Us Weekly reached out to The CW for comment, but did not immediately hear back. (The CW—which was created in 2006 as a merger of The WB and UPN—changed management in 2022, when it was acquired by Nextstarwhich had no network connections during the Bass pilot.)

Bass went on to share that the axed series was just the beginning of the difficulty of finding work in the industry after the release.

“Every casting director I knew was 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 but that,” he explained, noting that he had to “just reboot and rebrand” after “everything kind of fell apart.”

Although he’s had a tough time in Hollywood during his career, Bass said he’s since worked with some of the same casting directors who called their decision not to work with him earlier “really stupid.”

He added: “They’ve actually given me a lot of stuff since then, which is really funny and ironic. But you know, I don’t hold a grudge at all. I understand a lot. I get it. Business is business. It sucks, but I can never hold a grudge.”

In addition to his roles since the early 2000s, Bass has also appeared in numerous television shows and films, including cursed, I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry, Valley Peaks, Drop Dead Diva, The rookie and How I met your father. He has also lent his voice to animated productions such as Kim Possible and Trolls Band togetherappeared on Vanderpump Rules and serves as host to A house from the 90s okay Christina Milian.

The bander boy also starred in Season 7 on ABC Dancing with the starstaking third place after Warren Sapp and Brooke Burkeand starred on Broadway as Corny Collins in Hair spray.