Lance Bass and partner Lacey Schwimmer get ready for battle 

AfterElton.com: What led you to chose Lance as one of your contestants this year?
Conrad Green: Well basically with Joey Fatone being on the show, obviously they are great friends. And Joey was great on the show and I think in the process of Joey being on the show, Lance talked to him and was excited abut the idea and we talked about it and said, you know what, it’s always great having these guys on the show; they’re professionals, but they’re still coming from outside. And I think he’s going to be a really strong contestant on the show. He’s a really sweet guy.

AE: Do you think it’s noteworthy that Lance is the first out contestant?
CG: Is it noteworthy? Well, I suppose so, yeah. Any change culturally, any penetration like that is news. But there are so many openly gay people on TV now, I don’t think it’s causing a huge stir particularly. It wasn’t really a consideration of mine, to be honest.

AE: We did talk to you once before and when we asked you about having a gay couple as participants, you said you were open to that. Lance is matched up with a female contestant at this point. Did you ever consider matching him up with another male? Was that every an option?
CG: Not really. Obviously it’s an idea and we’ve discussed that kind of thing, but there’s a history of ballroom dance of male/female partnerships and this show does approximate a ballroom dancing competition, you know in all the proper dances that are there, and they’re judged in a proper way and all that kind of stuff. And so because of that I thought it would probably just look like a stunt if we put him with a guy as a partner, really, and I didn’t think it would have been in his interest particularly, or the show’s. There are lots of gay professional ballroom dancers and they’re always partnered with people of the opposite sex. There are lots of male, gay ballroom dancers who compete and they always dance with women.

AE: You do know there are competitions set up for same-sex couples.
CG: Yes, I know ... but I’m talking when you’re competition-level, as our dancers are on the show, world champions and stuff, they’re always partnered with opposite sexes and so we thought it would probably be more routine for the show to follow that principle.

AE: So you wanted to stick with the rules that you follow for ballroom dancing.
CG: Oh, yeah. It wasn’t a huge conscious decision about sticking with the rules, but it was more the sense that if a gay ballroom dancer was competing at the top level, which many of our people have, then they would be with a partner of the opposite sex and so we followed that principle as well.

AE: Do you think it would have been an issue for the Middle American demographic watching that it would be off-putting to see Lance dancing with another man?
CG: I think it would have caused a lot of interest in the show and a lot of people to watch. I’m sure some people would have thought it was great and some people would have thought it was awful. But it wasn’t really something I thought the show was about, particularly.

AE: No, I’m just curious.
CG: It doesn’t bother – a fear of reaction, if we had a fear of reaction [to having] a gay man on the show, we wouldn’t have booked Lance. I wouldn’t do that for a second. I don’t really care what people with a negative reaction to gay people feel about Lance being on the show. You know? That’s not really an issue, but I just felt more that it would have overwhelmed his participation on the show as a competitor on the show. I think people would have talked about that all the time and not talked about him being a competitor on the show and how good he was at dancing.

AE: I can’t say I disagree with you, which is unfortunate that you can’t do it without it becoming an issue. What do you think his chances are?
CG: I think he’s got a really good chance, to be honest. I mean, he’s a really likeable guy. He’s a great dancer, as far as I can tell. I don’t know if he’s as naturally as good a dancer as Joey was. He said in ‘N Sync he was the one who could sing and Joey was the one who could dance. So maybe he won’t be quite as good as Joey is, but I think this season is going to be a real challenge anyway because we’ve got a really tough season. We start with two dances and stuff like that. So I think that he’s probably going to find a little bit of both, dance backgrounds and being familiar with dance will help him in the early weeks, so I think he’s got a really strong chance. And I’m really hoping that his sexuality really has nothing to do with it, you know that people aren’t even talking about that. And if he ends up lifting the trophy at the end you can say, “There you go. There’s another step forward.”

AE: Thank you, Conrad.