Joey Fatone was 'blindsided' when Justin Timberlake left NSYNC to go solo and never came back

• Joey Fatone said he was "blindsided" when Justin Timberlake left NSYNC for a solo career.
• The other bandmates thought Timberlake would return after touring for his 2002 album "Justified."
• But Fatone isn't bitter: "My career and my life led me somewhere else, and I'm good and I'm happy with it."

NSYNC's Joey Fatone said that he was surprised when his bandmate Justin Timberlake went solo in 2002 and didn't return to NSYNC until the band's recent reunion.

In an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Fatone reflected on the group's new single "Better Place," which is part of the soundtrack for the Timberlake-starring movie "Trolls Band Together." Fatone said that it "fit right" to do the song as a group after Timberlake approached his bandmates about the idea.

Still, he said that he was taken aback when Timberlake left the group in the first place in 2002.

"I was not blindsided by the breakup; I was more blindsided as far as him coming out with music and not knowing that he was going to go and do an actual album/tour thing," Fatone told Yahoo! Entertainment. "It was more of, 'Hey, I'm going to do some music, and then we'll get back together.' That's what that was."

Fatone said that he and his fellow NSYNC bandmates – Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez, and Lance Bass — initially thought that Timberlake was going to return to the group after the tour for his 2002 album "Justified." Timberlake told the New York Post in 2002 after the release of his album that the band wasn't breaking up, and would eventually release another record.

NSYNC, however, didn't reunite to release new music following Timberlake's solo debut until the 2023 "Trolls" single, though they briefly appeared together at the 2023 MTV VMAs. The group's last full album was 2001's "Celebrity," which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, per Entertainment Weekly, and included the single "Pop."

After Timberlake's departure, Fatone said that he eventually moved on to other projects on Broadway, television, and the food space. Other members of the band, like Lance Bass, did the same.

"That's the beautiful part about it," he told Yahoo! Entertainment. "My career and my life led me somewhere else, and I'm good and I'm happy with it."