Lance Bass says he was told to keep his personal life from fans during his *NSYNC days: ‘Remember your audience’

Lance Bass was told that the *NSYNC audience didn’t want to know about his personal life

Video Transcript

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LANCE BASS: I think my childhood was pretty normal. It definitely felt safe and innocent. I grew up in a very small town. You knew everyone. You never locked your doors. To me, you didn't really have any worries.

One of the downfalls about growing up in such a conservative small place is having to hide your true self. I knew I was gay when I was five years old. And I knew what that meant. I also knew that you're not supposed to act on it, right. So there's so many things that you're taught as a kid, especially growing up in the church. Those lessons were given at an early age, which makes a kid question themselves, and actually start to hate themselves, and feel very lonely.

That was definitely not the most fun growing up, knowing that you have this secret that you would have to hide your whole life. I was 16 when I joined NSYNC. When we finally got that record deal in Germany, our moms went out with us the first year on the road and basically acted as our managers, they wash our clothes. It was a good transition for me coming from such a small, conservative town to living in Munich, Germany, where you're exposed to a lot, especially sex. It was eye opening.

At that time, everyone's starting to have their first girlfriends and dating. And I kind of put that to the side and now I had a career to have an excuse to say, oh, I'm too busy for that. For a few years it was kind of easy to get away with, because people didn't expect me to have the time to have a girlfriend.

Being in the entertainment industry you get told certain things and they allude to certain things. And no one ever flat out said, listen, if you're gay you can't do this. But they would do things like, look, if you have a girlfriend you can't really talk about them. And remember, remember your audience, your fans out there. They don't want to really know about your personal life. So that always to me was kind of a backhanded, look, we know you're gay, keep it a secret kid.

Also, being in a boy band, I got called gay every single day that I was in the band. And it wasn't because they actually thought I was gay, it's just because I was in a boy band. All of us got that. I definitely wasn't singled out. I think all of us got it equally.

You know one thing that I didn't have growing up was examples of gay people, especially in entertainment. Everyone was hidden. I didn't really have anyone to look up to. But now, this generation has so many people in the public eye to relate to and be like, oh, that sounds like my story, or that's the type of family I have.

Now we have Troye Sivan and people being 20 years old. Look, JoJo Siwa, especially Lil Nas X. And it's been so great for his community. We have all these young, young celebrities that are really accepting who they are, and because of that, their fans would probably accept themselves earlier.

I mean, when I came out in 2006, I don't think anyone would come out on the cover of "People" or really any magazine these days. No one cares. Everyone's like, OK, this is just normal. My niece and nephews, they were really little when I came out. I remember the first thing that they said. They didn't understand it, they're like, why is this a big deal? They could not comprehend why people cared about us being gay and why would it be so big to put you on the cover of "People". It really encouraged me to know that this younger generation is so accepting, and they look at it as kids and they don't know any different. That's just the reality of life to them.

Being from such a small place and a conservative place-- We really didn't look outside of our town. It was all about family, all about your friends. Well, now that I'm a dad, and the twins are here, there are certain things that I want to expose them to. I want them to be way more well-rounded and exposed to different cultures and different people. I'm excited that the village that we have around them come from such different walks of life. And they're going to get to know those and kind of get to choose the things that they love and they gravitate towards. I'm going to expose them to everything and encourage them to go into the fields. And if it's a certain profession or religion, I want to support whatever they choose and they figure out themselves.

There's definitely no plans for an NSYNC reunion right now. And never say never. But, with the twins here I probably won't be able to do anything like making an album or tour for quite a while now. We've all moved on to different things, and have crazy different lives. But the good thing is we all are still so close, they are family.

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