*NSYNC's Joey Fatone on Joining Du Bois Band of Broadway's & Juliet

There’s a new ancient grudge lurking inside fair Verona. In the waning years of the 20th century, it divided lunch tables, polarized school dances and forced unholy alliances, all because the people were forced to choose: “*NSYNC or Backstreet?”

Middle age softened the feud some, but Joey Fatone has returned to Broadway to end the civil blood once and for all—from the inside. On January 21, the *NSYNC baritone started his run as Lance Du Bois in & Juliet, the Max Martin jukebox musical that imagines the hot-girl Parisian summer Juliet would have had if she hadn’t turned the “happy dagger” on herself. Over the course of the show, Lance falls in love with Juliet’s Nurse, Angélique, and woos her with the Backstreet Boys ballad “Shape of My Heart.”

“It’s always interesting when you start to see an *NSYNC guy singing a Backstreet Boys song,” Fatone tells Tamsen Fadal on The Broadway Show. He’s seen how it can startle a crowd, having just wrapped up a tour with Backstreet Boys’ very own AJ McLean. “What we do is we sing each other's songs,” he says of the duo’s A Legendary Night show (Nirvana covers and jazz arrangements of Little Mermaid tunes also make the chaotic set list). “It's very interesting to see that it was *NSYNC and Backstreet in the same theater and not killing each other—which was great,” he says. “It's like, Hey, you can love both. It's okay."

Fatone has always had that kind of “yes-and” attitude about his career. In the past 30 years, he’s been a boy-band heartthrob, a film actor, a game show host, a Food Network personality, and of course, a Broadway star. He made his Broadway debut in 2002 as bohemian filmmaker Mark Cohen in the rock musical Rent, and in 2004, replaced Hunter Foster in the Broadway premiere of Little Shop of Horrors. “[It’s been] over 20 years,” he says to Fadal, thinking back to his last turn on the New York stage as corrupted florist Seymour Krelborn. “A little crazy to think about. But I'm excited.” He adds, “Usually I’m playing the younger roles. Now I'm playing the dad role. And I'm not mad at it.”

His time in & Juliet is brief—he's there through just March 16—but after two decades away and with 15- and 23-year-old daughters with whom he’d like to spend some quality time, the balance was right. “This is the perfect way to ease into it,” says Fatone. “The part is not a huge part—thank the lord—because I don't know if I could remember everything in that quick of a turnaround. But everything has been going great.”

The biggest hurdle so far: The accent.

“It’s horrible,” Fatone laughs resignedly. Paulo Szot, Broadway’s original Lance, had a leg up with his baseline of a Brazilian accent that he could scoot east to France. But Fatone’s Lance will be innately different than Szot’s, possibly upping the camp factor with an intentionally wobbly dialect. “It's a little bit different than Paulo, who's been doing it for many years,” says Fatone. “I want to definitely give that justice, but also put a little bit of spin on it for me.”

After he leaves the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in March, he anticipates heading back out on the road. Whether it’s with any particular fivesome that stoked the flames of hope with an ensemble episode of Hot Ones is to be determined.

“Right after this I'm going to be—crossing fingers—having a meeting with them and seeing what's going on. But we don't know what we're doing right now,” Fatone says with all honesty. “Always that question is, ‘Is *NSYNC getting back together?’ And of course the answer is, ‘I have no idea.’”