[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Impractical Jokers Season 11, Episode 1.]
Impractical Jokers is back on a new network as Season 11 debuted on truTV‘s sister channel TBS, and with the latest episode came one very special punishment for honorary Joker and former NSYNC singer, Joey Fatone.
Participating alongside Sal Vulcano, Brian “Q” Quinn, and James “Murr” Murray, Fatone took part in every challenge but was ultimately the night’s big loser. While his loss was surprising, his punishment was even more shocking as the Jokers took inspiration from their own past punishments to put Fatone through it.
Among the highlights was Fatone being forced to host a fake dance show in a tracksuit replicated from an NSYNC doll of his, being forced to numb his gums, getting a tattoo, and even peeing his pants. “No, he really peed his pants,” Q tells TV Insider when asked if there was a special rig in Fatone’s pants to replicate the act. “We made him do a punishment gauntlet of things that we’ve done in the past, and Sal had to pee his pants once on TV, so we made Fatone do it,” Q elaborates.
TBS
“When we pitched him the overall concept of doing a gauntlet of all these punishments, do you have any questions, any concerns? He was like, ‘Nah, whatever you want to do.’ So we took him at his word.” Luckily, Q says, “He’s just game for anything. He’s an awesome dude.”
Fatone’s been a long-time collaborator of the Jokers, so his involvement isn’t altogether surprising, but the finer details that went into the punishment required coordination and planning. For Fatone’s outfit, Q reveals that the show’s costume coordinator, Don-Ya, “got one of the [NSYNC] dolls and remade the outfit that the doll wears, so it’s an actual outfit that they put on the doll. Don-Ya hit a home run with that one. It was great.”
Helming a made-up show called Joey Fatone’s Dance Par-taay!, Fatone was put through the gamut, forever immortalizing his experience with a seemingly-customary tattoo of the show’s logo on his leg. The catch? There was a major spelling error with the final tattoo reading “Joey Fartone’s Dance Par-taay!” And if you think that’s taking things too far, Q assures viewers that Fatone had zero limits when it came to what he was cool with.
“That’s the great thing about Joey Fatone,” Q shares, noting that when he and the team reached out to see if there were any dos or don’ts, Fatone was clear, “[he] was like, ‘whatever you want to do, do.’ He did it. The trust that he gave us, and how game he was… I think the Joey Fatone episode is going to be a lot of people’s favorite episode of the run. He has so much fun and he wears it on his face. It’s kind of infectious.”
And fans can look forward to plenty of other exciting things as Impractical Jokers makes the leap to TBS. “We’re really excited about that,” Q muses about the network shift as he goes on to joke, “Having ruined and crushed truTV after all these years, we were really looking forward to coming over and bringing down TBS.”
Along with Fatone, there will be more celebrity guests, including Brooke Shields who Q was excited to see return. “Brooke Shields is back. They got her back to use against me,” he teases. “This season we have a bit where we go into a restaurant and we throw water in someone’s face, and they swapped out the person that I was throwing water in the face with Brooke Shields without me knowing.”
In other words, hilarity is sure to ensue. Don’t miss it for yourself, tune into Impractical Jokers on Thursday nights on TBS, and let us know what you thought of Joey Fatone’s premiere punishment in the comments section, below.
Impractical Jokers, Season 11, Thursdays, 10/9c, TBS
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