Joey Fatone Reflects on His ‘DWTS’ Wardrobe Malfunction, Reveals It Happens All the Time

Joey Fatone’s guest appearance on Dancing with the Stars last month still has people talking, and it’s not because of his moves. During a performance on the competition series, Fatone’s pants ripped open on camera. While some might be embarrassed if that happened anywhere — let alone on national TV — the former NSYNC member spoke rather candidly to Access Daily about it.

“Here’s the thing about that,” Fatone began, before explaining that when he donned the fated pair of pants, he was originally slated to judge DWTS. “When I had those pants on, I go, ‘I can’t really dance in these pants.’ I put the pants on and I asked ‘Can we reinforce these — and they did! They really re-stitched it.”

Despite their efforts to protect the pants from tearing, Fatone also added that one of the wardrobe assistants gave him an important piece of advice before he took to the dance floor.

“The lady goes, ‘Maybe you should change your underwear in case they rip,’” Fatone explained, before revealing she told him that because he was wearing “Deadpool underwear.”

Overall, Fatone seems to have brushed the whole incident off. Although, the reason may be that he’s used to this kind of thing happening.

“I’m always ripping my pants,” Fatone said, telling a brief anecdote that the same thing happened when NSYNC was filming the “Bye Bye Bye” music video. “I need a company that will make big-thigh men’s jeans. We need big-thigh jeans.”

As far as Fatone’s last-minute performance, he explained that the original plan was to have Spice Girls singer Emma Bunton judge the girl group performances, while Fatone would judge the boy band dances, as the show itself confirmed online. However, with Bunton backing out at the last moment, things were shuffled about at the last minute.

Fatone has a long history with DWTS, first appearing in the show’s seventh season in 2007, when he finished in second place behind Apolo Anton Ohno. He showed up again in season 15 but was the second contestant eliminated. He pulled a second comeback in Season 27, performing in a trio with John Schneider and Emma Slater, as well as taking part in Dancing With The Stars at Sea in 2013 and 2014.

Elsewhere in reality TV, Fatone started the year off having to publicly declare that he was most certainly not the one behind the Rabbit on The Masked Singer — though he admitted that he did want to be a judge on that show, too.