There are few people more qualified than Joey Fatone to take a hard, unflinching look into the complicated world of ’90s boy bands.
The NSYNC singer had a front-row seat to a defining cultural moment in the ’90s and 2000s, and now he wants others to know what really happened, and he’s executive producing secret boy band, The two-part investigative discovery doc that just finished airing Tuesday night.
“Why not now?” Fatone says Hollywood Reporter With a chuckle at the top of our Zoom conversation when asked about the timing. “The ’90s are back with a sense of nostalgia. People are digging into that, and we’re reliving things. I think the fans have heard some stories — we know Lou Perlman’s story. But there were so many times I talked to guys from other groups, and we always had these candid conversations. I always thought it would be good to tell their stories. Not just what the record company or management or whatever company did to them — what did they do in their lives?”
Secret boy band Wide-ranging, featuring the likes of Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean, NSYNC’s Lance Bass, Boyz II’s Wanya Morris, Shawn Stockman, 98 Degrees’ Nick Lachey and O-Town’s Ashley Parker Angel, among others. Through these themes, the series touches on common archetypes in the dark side of the music industry, including addressing addiction, racism, sexual assault, and gun violence.
“There’s definitely a common ground between us all in terms of emotions and stress, and the highs and lows of performance,” says Fatone. “But I thought it was important to show that everyone has a different path and a different story. With some of these people, we’re pretty much going back to when they were born.”
Fatone and the band’s longtime manager, Joe Mulvihill, who also produced the documentary, say the band members were initially hesitant about sharing their stories on camera, but they trusted Fatone as one of their peers, a crucial step in getting the project off the ground.
“It was very therapeutic for them,” Fatone says. And I see them being more open because the fact that I’m talking to them, we’re on the same ground.
Mulvihill adds, “We told them what we were doing, and they knew Joey would be there. They knew I wasn’t going to let anything come up that would make them look like they didn’t want to. We felt it was important to have the trust we’ve had over the years.”
Talk to thr, ID president Jason Sarlanes praised Fatone’s production work, adding that the series came solely from “his ability to put together this talented person who steps forward and create this almost massive ensemble to tell these stories.”
Stockman and Morris recalled the fatal shooting of their tour manager, Khalil Roundtree, who was killed in 1992 while the band was opening for MC Hammer on his Too Legit To Quit Tour. AJ McLean spoke about his struggle with staying sober; LFO’s Brad Fischetti talked about how his three former bandmates died from 2010 to 2023. In the second episode, Fatone himself talked about almost going broke after NSYNC.
“I’m literally trying to figure out what to do with my family, I’m moving my family into my parents’ house, and I had to figure out how to support my ex-wife and kids,” Fatone says. “Not everyone wants to talk about it.”
Not surprisingly, some of the most notable stories in the series revolve around Perlman, who launched and managed the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC and was eventually imprisoned after stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme. Perelman has faced allegations of sexual harassment for years, though he has consistently denied the allegations.
This isn’t the first time a documentary has highlighted Perelman’s transgressions, with events set in 2024. Dirty Pop: Boy Band Scam And 2019’s “The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story” by Lance Bass looks into some of the allegations as well.
O-Town’s Parker detailed the grooming allegations in the new documentary, recalling that others warned him not to go into a hotel room alone with Perlman. “There were a lot of inappropriate sexual circumstances that Lou and I found ourselves in,” Parker says in the film. “Kind of chipping away at you for lowering your guard.”
Parker recalls one story about Perlman taking him and Otown to a brothel in Germany. In another anecdote, Parker talked about how Perlman offered to give him a massage in a hotel room. He also referenced the late LFO member Rich Cronin to whom he attributed the story of Pearlman proposing to Cronin to perform oral sex. Cronin shared similar stories with Howard Stern in 2009.
Fatone and Mulvihill stop short of describing their series as a documentary about Lou Pearlman, though they admit that his shadow looms over much of the production, something that’s impossible to avoid when talking about this era of music.
“As filmmakers, Joey and I looked at it and thought how involved Lou was in this,” Mulvihill says. “And Ashley Parker’s story is so driven because she was Making the band. When you do a documentary about a boy band in the late 90s/early 2000s, Lou’s name always comes up. It’s wild. This was never the goal. The goal was to tell stories to people. It just so happened that it was Ashley’s.
When asked what he learned hearing these stories, Fatone joked of Perlman, “I learned what not to do. I learned the meaning of the word ‘redeemable’. I learned a lot of things from Lou Perlman.”
Fatton said he was not previously aware of Parker’s allegations, and that he had heard Cronin spoke with others about Pearlman but did not know he had spoken to Parker at all.
“Speaking for myself, I always felt like it was just something weird about Perelman, and I didn’t know what it was,” he says. “You think, ‘Okay, businessman.’ Most businessmen are off. Let’s be real. Why is he hanging around these guys? You start asking these questions. But in most of these documentaries, they dig deep to get to ‘Lou, Lou Lou.’ It was more or less, ‘No, what happened to these guys?’ These guys were part of this. They were involved. These are the ones who were manipulated. And how do we deal with that?”
Even through claims, Secret boy band It still paints a complex picture about Perelman, with many interviewees still expressing their affection for him as the man responsible for giving them jobs.
“It’s interesting to see that a lot of these guys cared for Lou,” says Fatone. “I think at first he was trying to be a father figure. I don’t even think he intended to hurt us as a group or as a man in general. He more or less wanted to mend his pockets. And that’s why we say, I wish I had this question so I could sit down and go, why? Why did you do this? With all the good he was doing, why was that?
Through the stories about Perlman, the pressures they face from record companies and the unique pressures of fame, does Fatone see the boy band members as victims?
“I think it’s up to that person individually,” Fatone says. “Some people were probably saying, ‘You know, I had a great time. It was good. Some people, some things were a little suspicious.’
Fatone, Mulvihill and Sarlanes say Secret boy band The film seeks not to paint a completely compelling picture of boy band life, but rather to show resilience and hope, with a nod to the end of the documentary, which depicts several people moving on with their lives.
As Fatone says: “There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”
As for what’s next, Mulvihill says they’re looking at similar projects in other eras and types of industry.
“We look to rock bands, we look to girl groups as a secondary chain to that,” he says. “As we look at it, it’s crazy to me that there’s a dividing line in every genre with the same kind of things going on.”
Secret boy band It’s now streaming on HBO Max.
