The *NSYNC member and 'Boy Meets World' actress started dating in 1999, before he came out as gay.
Lance Bass and Danielle Fishel's love story romance is getting the rom-com treatment! On a recent episode of Fishel's Pod Meets World podcast, the Boy Meets World actress had her ex as a guest on the show and they recalled dating during her senior year of high school.
The two first met when *NSYNC came on Boy Meets World for a live special in 1999. After spending the day together, Fishel found out that Bass had a crush on her. He got Justin Timberlake to get Fishel's phone number for him, and the two started dating while he was on tour and she was filming the ABC sitcom. Eventually, Bass went to prom with Fishel.
"I thought I was going to marry Lance. I had envisioned our future," Fishel recalled. "I held on for hope for way too long that we were going to get back together and get married and have a family. … It turns out I’m not Lance’s type."
Bass, who publicly came out as gay in 2006, remembered the prom as a stepping stone for him to live in his truth.
"I think so many people can relate to that story; so many people in the LGBT community, their prom night was the night they were like, ‘Oh, wait a minute. This can’t happen anymore,'” he said. “This was the catalyst for me that made me start to accept myself, which took a long time after that, but that was definitely the first little straw that broke.”
Now, 43-year-old Bass and 41-year-old Fishel want to make their love story into a movie, with Lauren Lapkus (Crashing, Orange Is the New Black) and Marie Holland penning the script. "Lance and I are actually working on a movie about our love story and about our prom experience," she explained. "I dated Lance for about a year while I was on Boy Meets World. It was my senior year and Lance came with me to my high school prom."
Bass and Fishel even recall discussing getting a hotel room for after the school dance. "Lance and I had a very wonderful, very warm, loving relationship but it was completely lacking of intimacy -- intimacy in the romantic sense," Fishel noted. "Lance and I had a hotel room booked and I had a vision for what that night was going to be and Lance was very nervous about what my vision for that night was going to be. That is the night Lance talks about, where he felt like he was hurting me by not being honest with himself or anyone else about what was going on in his life so it was kind of the impetus for him to say, 'I’m going to end our relationship.'"
Bass broke up with Fishel two weeks later, and blamed the long distance. Devastated at the time, the actress said she called her mom, who asked if there was a possibility that Bass was gay. Fishel was adamant at the time that Bass was not a gay man.
It wasn't until years later that Bass came out to Fishel, and the two have remained close friends.
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