Lance Bass and Joey Fatone say working together on E!'s new cocktail competition, Cocktail Wars, comes naturally after more than 30 years of knowing each other. The two *NSYNC members are fronting a show built around three mixologists competing in skill-based challenges for $10,000, while they taste the drinks and help steer the action.
Fatone said the partnership is so smooth that each can read the other before a joke lands. Bass put it more bluntly: he said the job felt easy because they already know how the other thinks. That familiarity matters on a show that asks them to keep pace with fast-moving rounds and a lot of glasses, including one challenge that left about 35 drinks in front of them to taste.
That is why Bass keeps coming back to the same point: the show is not just about cocktails, but about two people who have spent decades working side by side. Fatone said they have known each other for well over 30 years, and that history lets them move through the hosting without stepping on each other. The format gives the series its shape, but their shorthand gives it its rhythm.
There is still a gap between how the pair present themselves and what the show actually demanded of them. Bass said he had gone into bar life with a different kind of confidence, even trying to bartend at Mugshots in New York after ordering his first drink, a Coors Light, on First Avenue in New York. He admitted he poured ice into the beer and had to be told not to scoop ice for beer. On Cocktail Wars, that same instinct had to be rebuilt from scratch, starting with Melissa Brooke teaching them terms like free pouring and the wash line.
That learning curve is part of the appeal. Bass said he does not like gin and thinks it tastes like pine, yet the show pushed him to try gin drinks he ended up liking. Bass and Fatone are joined by celebrity judges including Rachel Maddow, Lauren Graham and Seth Green, but Brooke is the one who most importantly evaluates the finished drinks. The real question now is not whether the hosts can carry the show; it is how much of their own surprise the rest of Cocktail Wars will keep revealing as the episodes unfold.
