Lance Bass revealed that Jason Collins called him for advice before the veteran NBA player made history by being the first active male pro athlete in a team sport to come out as gay.
“He’s been trying to plan this for a very long time, contemplating if he wanted to do this,” said the former boy bander on his Sirius XM radio show. “In fact, he said he was going to call me months ago but was too scared, because he wanted to tell me.”
Bass, who knows Collins through mutual friend Joanna Garcia, spoke frankly about his own experience with coming out to the Washington Wizards player. The N*SYNC singer’s sexuality was revealed to the public in 2006 on the cover of People magazine, but Bass confessed he wasn’t necessarily ready.
“I told [Collins], look, this is what I wish would have happened when I came out…because when I came out I had 24 hours to decide what was going to happen, because basically the magazine said ‘We’re doing it with or without you.’”
The “Dirty Pop” radio host urged Collins to sit down with groups like GLAAD to get information on how to handle coming out to the public. According to Bass, the athlete did not previously have many connections to the LBGT community.
“Jason said today, ‘I don’t really know that many gay people because all my life has been sports,’” the singer said on his radio show.
Bass recalled that he was initially fearful of homophobic comments when he came out, but he was surprised to receive tremendous support instead.
“I was scared that people were going to make fun of me so much that it would set the community back and scare people into the closet more. Because I thought being a boy bander, people were going to take that and…[say]…‘Of course!’ and make fun of me so much—I was so scared that it was going to hurt the community, but it didn’t. It totally went the other route.”