When Joey Fatone needed a break from ‘NSYNC, he decided a wedding would be nice. Nah, the singer didn’t tie the knot – he took on a role in the independent film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which hits theaters April 14.
“Obviously [‘NSYNC] can get old or tiring after a while and you’re like, ‘I want little bit of a change,’ ” Fatone said at a screening of the movie last week. “[So you] go do a movie. Be a character. Be nutty. Be silly. Whatever the case may be. And then you’re like, ‘OK, well, now I can be creative and go back to doing writing and dancing and performing with ‘NSYNC.’ ”
In “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which Fatone filmed before last year’s “On the Line,” he plays the cousin of the main character, played by Nia Vardalos. Vardalos also wrote the script, which Fatone called “wonderful.”
Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, offered to produce the movie after seeing Vardalos’ one-woman play on the same subject: a young Greek-American woman who falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept her fiancé. John Corbett (“Sex and the City,” “Northern Exposure”) co-stars.
Fatone filmed his scenes at the same time ‘NSYNC were recording Celebrity.
“We are supportive of anything that anybody else does in the group,” he said. “They were able to work the schedule were it was like I flew in [to Toronto] to shoot some of the scenes, then flew back to record.”
The traveling didn’t wear on Fatone so much as the different schedules.
“Being on tour all the time, you’re doing a show that night and you’re driving into the next city early in the morning, and you get to sleep in because you got in at like 5 in the morning,” Fatone explained. “[Movies are] reversed. You wake up at 5 in the morning, you’re done sometimes by 5 or maybe even 9, depending on what the shoots are. And then you’re in bed by 9. That’s the way I was on this [movie] and ‘On the Line.’ I was beat.”
Fatone’s next movie, “The Bros.,” about two suburban white guys who journey into the world of hardcore rap, is expected to debut at a yet-unspecified film festival later this year.
Meanwhile, ‘NSYNC continue on their Celebrity 2002 tour Tuesday in San Antonio.
