Dirty Pop.
Former *NSYNC member Joey Fatone details the dark side of the ’90s boy band world in his new documentary, “Boy Band Confidential.”
Fatone, 49, told Page Six that being able to reflect on his experiences during that time period for the doc was “therapeutic.”
The “pressure” of the industry can “build up,” he explained, and then, “one day it’s either [someone] explodes, or [falls into a] depression, and then that could lead to possibly suicide or addiction or whatever the case may be.”
He said, “It’s not an easy life, it’s not an easy thing to go through.”
Fatone and his longtime manager, Joe Mulvihill, executive produce the ID doc, which interviews former boy band members from the 1990s about their behind-the-scenes experiences.
It covers how the industry “puts a lot of pressure on men, and women in general,” Fatone explained to us.
Fellow *NSYNC member Lance Bass is in the doc, as well as 98 Degrees member Nick Lachey, Backstreet Boy AJ McLean, and more.
Many of them detail working with Lou Perlman, the former music manager fraudster behind The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. He died in prison in 2016 while serving 25 years for masterminding a huge Ponzi scheme that swindled 1,700 victims out of $300 million.
“We all have something in common,” Fatone told Page Six, referring to other boy band alums, comparing it to being in a “fraternity.”
“It’s amazing to see how strong these guys are,” he said.
He added that they shared the desire “to be the artist that they wanted to be” and sometimes they were met with “good things” and “bad things…it’s a tough world.”
Fatone said he didn’t want to “manipulate” the documentary to “go down a dark path,” but he was willing to go there if people wanted to talk about it.
“We interviewed each person for about 4 or 5 hours. It was very intense [at] certain times because we had some of the guys break down,” he told Page Six.
He cited former LFO member Brad Fischetti as someone who “broke down” while discussing his former band mates, who all died before age 50. (Rich Cronin died of leukemia at 36, Brian Gillis died at 47 with no cause disclosed, and Devin Lima died of cancer at 41).
Fatone himself nearly went bankrupt around 2010, after mishandling his own finances after his career success.
Mulvihill told Page Six that when boy band members have a “big spotlight,” everybody “thinks your life is perfect.
“Any time Joey would reference like, ‘man, my finances are kind of screwed up,’ the [reaction would be] ‘Really, dude, you were just on MTV doing this. Or, really? Dude, you were in Brazil [performing] in front of 300,000 people.’”
Mulvihill told Page Six that there was no “leeway” for “these guys because of the life they were living.”
He added that the public didn’t know that “behind the curtain, normal everyday life happens.”
“We all make mistakes,” Fatone told Page Six.
“What do we do with those mistakes, and how do we get out of that? That’s why I want to tell a lot of those stories.”
“Boy Band Confidential” airs Tuesday, April 14 at 9 p.m. on ID and streams on HBO Max.
