Out Celeb Lance Bass Recalls the Fear and Panic of the Closet

He's out, proud, and married now, but in a recent interview Lance Bass recalled a time when he was so deep in the closet he panicked when a fellow *NSYNC member asked if he was gay.

Talking with Vulture about the band's songs, dance routines, style, and more in support of the 20th anniversary of their hit album "No Strings Attached," Bass flashed back on a video shoot for the single "It's Gonna Be Me," which depicted the band members as puppets. Bass remembered that "we spent way too many hours in makeup," but even more grueling was the moment when fellow *NSYNC member Chris Kirkpatrick asked him point-blank about his sexual orientation.

Remembering it as "a big day for me because it was the first day someone asked me if I was gay," Bass related how "Chris Kirkpatrick sat me down and said, 'Hey dude are you gay?'"

"No one had ever asked me that," Bass, who grew up a Southern Baptist in Mississippi, added. "I was super in the closet and way too young to even know or care about what was happening. But I remember getting so freaked out on that set because he caught me so off guard."

Acknowledging that his bandmates were bound to be curious about his not having a girlfriend, Bass went on to say that Kirkpatrick's "very blunt" question scared him.

"I said, 'No, what are you talking about?'" Bass said. "I wasn't even telling myself the truth," he added. "I definitely wasn't gonna tell Chris."

Still, there might have been other telltale signs: Bass told Vulture that he was fresh from Mississippi when he joined the band, and "did not know a thing about getting a haircut."

After a time, though, "I got the frosted tips. You know once I discovered frosted tips I never went back!"

Eventually Bass did come out, and it was on his own terms. In July, 2006, Bass kicked down the closet door in an interview with People Magazine. In his comments, Bass addressed the kind of fear that has kept (and still keeps) many talented people living lives of painful inauthenticity.

"Could that be the end of *NSYNC?" Bass recalled thinking when he pondered coming out. "So I had that weight on me of like, 'Wow, if I ever let anyone know, it's bad.'"

Even before he came out publicly, though, Bass was inching towards the liberating truth. One early confidant was fellow *NSYNC member Joey Fatone, who told People, "He took years to really think about how he was going to tell everyone."

"I back him up 100%," Fatone added.

So do Bass' fans, not to mention his family...which is growing. Bass and his husband, Michael Turchin, expect to become fathers next month, much as another gay power couple, Pete and Chasten Buttigieg, did just days ago. While the Buttigiegs adopted, Bass and Turchin's bundle of joy will arrive via surrogacy.