Kevin Mazur / Getty ImagesLance Bass is counting on most of 'N Sync to come watch him compete in Dancing With the Stars. The only one he's not too sure about is Justin Timberlake.
"If Justin ever calms down and doesn't not work, then he'll definitely be here," Bass says.
With or without friends in the audience, Bass is, surprisingly quite nervous about DWTS.
Why? Ya gotta keep reading for the second part of my one-on-one with Lance to find out...
Never mind the complicated footwork—he's got those seriously tight and more-often-than-not revealing costumes to worry about.
"I probably won't be doing it with my shirt off," Bass, 29, says. "I'm going to be very skeptical even to just do an open shirt!"
His dance partner Lacey Schwimmer chimes in, "You need a lot of hair for that. We're going to have to put some extensions on your chest."
Bass peeks into his T-shirt at his manscaped torso and laughs, "My hair's growing back!"
His chest isn't his only concern. At 5'10" and 180 pounds, Bass is hoping to shed more than just the five pounds he's already lost since he began working with Schwimmer five weeks ago. "I just wanna be a little bit lighter," he explains. "I think I'm a good ten pounds overweight." (That's certainly debatable because, truth be told, he looks darn fit to me.)
Bass knows the competition is going to be tough. "I haven't seen them all dance yet, but if I were psychic, I would say that Toni Braxton will be really good," he says. "I think Maurice Green will be great and I think Kim Kardashian could be a really big threat. Oh, and Misty May-Treanor! Those athletes are really good."
Schwimmer, who makes her DWTS debut this season after a stint with So You Think You Can Dance, insists Bass is right up there with the best of them. "He's doing great," she says. "He picks up really, really, really fast. He's really insecure about himself in a lot more ways than he should be."
Talk turns more serious when Bass and I start chatting tabloid press. He says he can't imagine what it's like for today's new crop of young stars. "The rules have definitely changed since we were at the top of our game," Bass says. "I'm pretty sure we were scandalous—just no one ever caught us."
There's at least one trio of young men whom Bass thinks won't self-destruct under the pressure that remind him of 'N Sync. "The Jonas Brothers are going to be fine because they're brothers and that's what we were," he says before walking into a dance studio with Schwimmer for about three hours of rehearsal. "We were like brothers. We kept each other grounded."