*NSYNC’s $35-a-Day Era Is the Most 2000s Hollywood Horror Story
Lance Bass says the boy band’s first paycheck arrived after years of No. 1 albums, sold-out tours and merchandise mania. It was $10,000. Total.
There are bad paydays, and then there is the kind of payday that makes an entire generation suddenly want to call its financial adviser.
Lance Bass has revealed that *NSYNC’s early compensation was so bleak it sounds like a rejected plotline from a music-industry satire: the group was given a $35 daily per diem while working in Europe, then waited years for its first actual check. When that check finally arrived, after No. 1 albums and sold-out tours, it was for $10,000.
“You’re like, ‘Oh, thanks,’” Bass recalled on The Zach Sang Show. “We should be grateful for that, been working for free for two, three years now.”
That sentence contains the entire boy-band industrial complex in miniature. Five teenagers. Matching choreography. Endless travel. Screaming fans. Merchandise everywhere. Adults in suits making decisions. And, apparently, $35 for lunch, transportation and the emotional cost of being told you are lucky to be there.
The $35 Per Diem That Launched a Thousand Group Chats
Bass, now 47, was part of *NSYNC alongside JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick and Justin Timberlake from 1995 until the group went on indefinite hiatus in 2002. Their origin story was built in Europe before the band broke through in the American market, and Bass says the members were effectively working for free for two or three years before that first $10,000 check showed up.
To be clear, $10,000 split across five band members after years of work is not a glamorous windfall. It is the sort of number that might cover a modest car, a few months of rent or one aggressively priced music-video outfit. It is not exactly a retirement plan for the faces of a pop empire.
And then there was the merchandise. Bass specifically pointed to the sheer scale of the *NSYNC merch machine, saying he did not know how many millions were made from it. Fans were buying the shirts, dolls, posters and every other piece of branded evidence that they had chosen a favorite. The band was everywhere, but Bass says the money was not necessarily following them there.
“It’s so weird how people think I’m so filthy rich from *NSYNC,” he said. “No. Not at all.”
That is the detail that gives this story its particularly sharp sting. To the public, *NSYNC represented peak pop-star abundance: giant tours, platinum records and a level of teen-magazine saturation that made it impossible to enter a pharmacy without seeing at least one member’s face. But cultural visibility and personal wealth are not twins. Sometimes they are barely acquaintances.
Welcome to the Lou Pearlman School of Adults Being in the Room
Bass did not frame the situation as a quirky accounting error. He connected it to the late Lou Pearlman, the group’s former manager, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2008 on charges including conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding.
Bass called Pearlman “one of the biggest scam artists of all time” and said Pearlman “made a lot.” The singer also described carrying resentment toward Pearlman and the record label because he felt there was no one protecting the members.
His sharpest criticism was aimed not only at the people allegedly taking advantage of the situation, but at the adults who watched young performers work themselves into the ground and treated youth as a substitute for labor protections.
“The adults in the room saying, ‘You’re just a kid, you’re fine. Dance, land on your knees. You’re young, you don’t need to sleep, you’re a kid,’” Bass recalled. “Well, who cares if you’re young? You still need to make a living and set yourself up for the future.”
It is a very different image of the glossy late-’90s pop machine than the one sold in music videos. The choreography says: synchronized joy. The accounting says: please enjoy this $35.
Bass’s comments also land differently now because the group’s original members have had decades to live with the afterlife of that success. The public tends to treat a famous catalog as a permanent ATM, especially when the songs remain instantly recognizable. But Bass said the group does receive residuals, just not very much, and that he “didn’t make money with *NSYNC hardly at all.”
That distinction matters. A song can be culturally immortal without making every person associated with it rich forever. In fact, the bigger the nostalgia economy gets, the stranger it feels to hear one of the people who created the nostalgia say the economy did not exactly include him.
The Boy-Band Stigma Came With a Second Bill
Money was only part of the problem. Bass said the members also had to “start over” after *NSYNC, dealing with the stigma attached to being in a boy band at a time when the industry treated that category as disposable, manufactured or somehow less serious than other forms of music.
“You were looked at as less than, you were made fun of,” he said. “So try parlaying a career after being in a band like that where no one took you seriously.”
That may be the most revealing part of his reflection. The group could be considered valuable enough to power a massive merchandise operation, but not artistically respectable enough to make the transition afterward easy. First, the members were told they were too young to worry about money. Then, once the machine moved on, they were told the thing that made them famous was not serious.
Bass said the members were left to build their post-*NSYNC lives themselves. He is now a television host and entertainer, and he shares twins with his husband, Michael Turchin. But the fact that he did well after the band does not erase what he says happened during it. Success after the fact is not retroactive compensation.
He also admitted that he wishes *NSYNC had continued, pointing to the Backstreet Boys as an example of a group that kept working together. Bass said the members remain close and talk every week, but the band continuing as an active unit “wasn’t in the cards.”
Which leaves *NSYNC in the most bittersweet corner of pop history: beloved enough to be remembered forever, profitable enough to sell out tours and merchandise, and apparently underpaid enough to make $35 sound like a personal insult.
Somewhere, a teenager is currently wearing a vintage *NSYNC shirt that cost more than the band’s first daily allowance. The circle is not complete, but it is certainly accessorized.
Khloé Kardashian Roasted Her Flirty Teacher Fling on TV. He Came Prepared.
A year after Khloé’s sweet Instagram comment turned one high school teacher into a Kardashian-adjacent headline, Jacob Myers-Norys answered The Kardashians with coffee, deadpan silence and one extremely fair point.
There are two kinds of people who get publicly dragged by a Kardashian: the ones who disappear into the algorithm, and the ones who turn the humiliation into content.
Jacob Myers-Norys, a high school teacher whose Instagram flirtation with Khloé Kardashian briefly became one of the internet’s favorite celebrity side plots, has chosen the second path. Nearly a year after Khloé left a playful comment under one of his posts, the exchange resurfaced on The Kardashians—and Jacob responded with the calm, exhausted dignity of a man who has been roasted by teenagers for a living.
In other words: he may not have gotten the date, but he absolutely got the episode.
The comment that escaped into the Kardashian industrial complex
The original moment was almost aggressively wholesome. Jacob had highlighted some of his best qualities on Instagram and captioned the post with a wish that a woman would ask him how his day was. Khloé, apparently interpreting the invitation literally, commented: “How was your day?”
That was it. No candlelit dinner. No secret yacht. No dramatic soft launch from a restaurant booth. Just a famous woman responding to a man’s extremely online suggestion with the exact question he had requested.
But the internet does not believe in leaving a harmless flirtation at harmless. The interaction took off, and Khloé later described it as going “like wildfire.” What looked to her like a cute, innocent exchange apparently looked to Jacob like a door opening. According to Khloé, he followed up repeatedly, sending messages that included “Just shooting my shot once again” and saying he would love to meet and talk about how her day was.
By the time the moment landed in the season eight premiere of The Kardashians, it had transformed from a tiny Instagram exchange into a full confessional segment. This is the Kardashian gift: taking a digital crumb and giving it a wardrobe, a soundtrack and a subplot.
Khloé brought the screenshots. Jacob brought the mug.
Khloé’s version of events was that the comment had been “innocent,” not an invitation to start planning a future together. “Do I think I’m gonna go and marry this young man? Absolutely not,” she said, setting the boundaries with the gentle bluntness of someone who knows a sentence is about to become a meme.
She also said she had around 15 unanswered direct messages from Jacob, then read several of them aloud on camera. The tone was less “forbidden romance” and more “one person thought this was a conversation, while the other person realized it was a comment section.”
Then came the name joke. Khloé pointed out that Jacob’s social handle uses “Yacob” and told him to “get a J.” It was a small tease, but on a Kardashian show, small teases tend to arrive with production polish and a built-in audience of millions.
Jacob’s answer, posted to TikTok on Oct. 9, was beautifully low-effort in the most high-performing way possible. He drank from a coffee mug, stared into the camera and let a sarcastic audio clip do the emotional labor. The text over the video read: “When they try to roast and embarrass me on The Kardashians, but I get roasted by high schoolers every single day.”
That is not the response of a man spiraling over a celebrity rejection. That is the response of a man who understands his lane, knows his audience and has clearly survived a staff meeting with teenagers before 8 a.m.
His caption made the victory lap even cleaner: “Hey, at least I can say I made it onto The Kardashians.” Correct. The Kardashian cinematic universe has room for exes, billionaires, professional athletes, musicians, beauty moguls and—at least briefly—a teacher with a flirtatious caption. Jacob got his cameo and managed to keep his sense of humor intact.
The flirtation was never really about the date
What makes this little saga stick is the mismatch in scale. For Khloé, it was a passing comment she described as wholesome. For Jacob, it became an unexpected brush with one of reality television’s most recognizable families. For the internet, it was a perfect miniature of modern celebrity: a public figure says something lightly playful, a stranger answers with enthusiasm, and suddenly everyone is discussing the etiquette of a direct message that was never going to become a relationship.
Khloé’s public romantic history also gives the scene a little extra context. She has spent years navigating the particularly exhausting celebrity phenomenon in which any interaction with a man can be treated as a possible reconciliation, soft launch or emergency relationship update. Her on-and-off history with Tristan Thompson has repeatedly pulled her into speculation she has called “tiring,” even as the two continue co-parenting their children.
So when Khloé insists that a comment was only a comment, she is speaking from an ecosystem where casual warmth can instantly be upgraded into a storyline. Her joke about Jacob’s messages was sharp, but the larger point was familiar: an online moment can feel much more consequential once thousands of people decide it means something.
Jacob, meanwhile, seems to have understood the assignment better than most people who wander into Kardashian orbit. He didn’t pretend the exchange was a great romance. He didn’t act wounded by the punchline. He simply made the joke about his own job, where getting roasted is apparently part of the daily curriculum, and accepted the most realistic consolation prize available: screen time.
There is something almost charming about how little this story needs to become. No breakup announcement. No suspicious vacation. No matching tattoos. No blurry nightclub sighting being analyzed by a panel of internet detectives. Just a flirty Instagram comment, a batch of unanswered messages, a televised roast and a teacher with a coffee mug refusing to look devastated on command.
Khloé may have wanted everyone to calm down, but Jacob’s TikTok gave the moment a second life. The original interaction belonged to the comment section. The sequel belongs to him.
And honestly, “I made it onto The Kardashians” is a better ending than most people get from shooting their shot.
Olivia Culpo Is Bringing the Flameless Candles Back to the Delivery Room
The model’s famously overpacked hospital bag is getting a sequel — because apparently childbirth still needs mood lighting, comfort objects and a little WAG-level production design.
Olivia Culpo is about to give birth again, and she is refusing to leave the flameless candles behind.
The model, 34, is expecting her second child with husband Christian McCaffrey in the next few weeks, and she has already made one crucial decision: the hospital bag that went viral during her first pregnancy is coming back in full. Same comfort-first philosophy. Same over-the-top packing energy. Same tiny battery-powered flickering flames, apparently still ready for their close-up.
“I don’t think I’ll change too much because I actually used everything I brought last time,” Culpo told Page Six Style. “Yes, this means I’ll be bringing back the flameless flickering candles!”
Some people bring a phone charger. Olivia Culpo brings ambiance.
The hospital bag has entered its sequel era
Culpo’s first hospital bag became a minor pop-culture event last year because it looked less like a last-minute grab before labor and more like a luxury wellness retreat with a birth plan. Among the essentials were flameless candles, which sparked controversy and gave the internet one of those irresistible celebrity debates: Is this wildly unnecessary, or is everyone else simply under-accessorizing childbirth?
Culpo’s answer is clear. She used the things she packed, loved having them there and sees no reason to reinvent the experience just because there is another baby on the way. “I’m such a creature of comfort,” she said, adding that she “really did love having every single thing” she brought for her last delivery.
It is a very Olivia Culpo approach to maternity: practical in theory, highly curated in execution. There is no shame in wanting comfort during labor, but Culpo’s version comes with a visual identity. Even the hospital bag has a mood board.
And, honestly, the return of the candles is the kind of detail celebrity pregnancy coverage was made for. It is specific, slightly absurd, easy to picture and just divisive enough to make people text a friend. The internet can debate epidurals, birth plans and hospital snacks forever. The real question is whether the delivery room needs the lighting to be “cozy.”
Her maternity wardrobe is also refusing to phone it in
Culpo is not treating her second pregnancy as a reason to disappear into oversized sweats, either. She has teamed up with Bumpsuit on a collection of maternity and postpartum pieces that includes a unitard, a long-sleeved catsuit and a strapless gown.
Her philosophy is less “hide the bump” and more “dress the bump like it has somewhere to be.” Culpo said she has always loved embracing her pregnancy and wants her clothes to reflect pride in what her body can do. The pieces are designed to be comfortable and easy while still making the wearer feel pulled together, she explained.
That is the eternal maternity-style assignment: remain comfortable, retain a personality and somehow look like you meant to leave the house. Culpo’s answer is sleek, body-skimming and polished enough to suggest that pregnancy dressing does not have to mean surrendering your entire closet to elastic waistbands.
She also told Page Six Style that she has picked up “a few more tips and tricks” this time around, though her overall style has stayed consistent across both pregnancies. Translation: the second baby gets experience, but not necessarily a less coordinated wardrobe.
Welcome to the Culpo-McCaffrey family brand
Culpo’s pregnancy style push arrives alongside Picolette by Olivia Culpo, her Target-exclusive baby collection inspired by her 1-year-old daughter, Colette, whom she welcomed with McCaffrey last July.
The line includes blankets, toys, floral details and plenty of football-themed items — a nod to McCaffrey’s NFL career. There is even merchandise inspired by the family’s toy Goldendoodle, Oliver Sprinkles, a name so aggressively adorable it sounds like it was generated by a celebrity pet focus group.
Culpo said the collection grew out of her own experience as a mother and the things she wanted for her children. She also acknowledged that working while pregnant and raising a toddler “can definitely be a lot,” though she sees the brand and motherhood as closely connected.
That is the larger Culpo-McCaffrey picture right now: a model with a maternity line, a football star husband, a toddler, a dog with a better name than most human influencers and a hospital bag that has already achieved its own little celebrity status. The family’s public image is polished, but the details are just eccentric enough to keep it from feeling like one long sponsored beige nursery reveal.
The candle discourse is not over — and Culpo knows it
The appeal of Culpo’s hospital bag is not that it is relatable in the traditional sense. Most people are not packing a delivery-room atmosphere kit, and most hospitals are not being transformed into a boutique hotel suite for the arrival of Baby No. 2.
The appeal is that she is unapologetically specific. She knows what makes her feel comfortable, she has tested the system once and she is bringing the successful formula back. In a culture that treats every celebrity pregnancy as a new aesthetic era, Culpo’s commitment to the same flameless candles is almost refreshingly un-chaotic.
There will be no dramatic hospital-bag rebrand. No minimalist reset. No “this time I’m doing things completely differently” press tour. Just a pregnant woman who liked her little fake flames and intends to enjoy them again.
As Culpo prepares to become a mother of two, she is also selling the fantasy that the transition can include softness, style and a few deliberately chosen comforts. The fantasy may come with a $145 unitard, a $225 satin gown and battery-operated candles, but at least it knows exactly what it is.
Baby No. 2 has not arrived yet, but the nursery-to-hospital pipeline is already fully branded. Somewhere, a flameless candle is flickering bravely in anticipation.