Lance Bass claimed he was only paid $35 a day when he rose to fame with *NSYNC.
“Our first check was $10,000,” the former boy bander said on Thursday’s episode of “The Zach Sang Show,” noting that the shockingly low amount came after “years and years of number-one albums” and “cut-rate sales tours.”
“I don’t know how many millions I made from the merchandise because the merchandise was crazy,” he recalled.
Bass claimed that when he and bandmates Justin Timberlake, J.C. Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone were “finally” given a $10,000 check, they were told, “You should be grateful for this. You’ve been working for free for two, three years.”
As for his current situation, Bass, now 47, claimed he “definitely” gets leftovers but “not too many.”
“People think I’m super rich because of *NSYNC, but no,” he insisted. “Like hell.”
Although Bass says the band “did well” after going on hiatus in 2002, he is “more proud of it than anything else.” [he] after that I did,” he doubled down.
“I made almost no money from *NSYNC,” he said of the band, which formed in 1995.
Bass also claimed that although he and his bandmates did not make a fortune from their talents, their “record label” and their infamous late music manager Lou Pearlman “made very good money.”
Pearlman, who was imprisoned in 2008 after being convicted of money laundering, bankruptcy fraud and conspiracy, died in prison in 2016.
When asked if the singer held “resentment” over the allegedly low earnings, he replied “not anymore” but admitted he felt cheated.
“Everyone was saying, ‘You’re young, you’re young,'” he recalled. “Well, who cares if you’re young? You still have to make a living and prepare yourself for the future because [in] “In most of these cases, there is a limited amount of time to do something like this, and no one prepared us for life after that.”
This isn’t the first time Bass has claimed dismissal during his tenure in the world-famous band “Bye Bye Bye.”
In 2023, Bass called people who think they got rich because of the band’s success “the worst thing.”
“We were famous, but we weren’t rich,” he admitted during an appearance on SiriusXM’s “Jess Cagle Show.”
“I made way more money after *NSYNC than I did during *NSYNC.”
Still, he said that “obviously” being part of the boy band at the peak of fame changed his life and his trajectory.
“We had a great support system,” he said. “I’m glad I was in a band because I had four brothers to keep you going.”