Justin Timberlake may be M.I.A. when it comes to keeping in touch with his old *NSYNC bandmates sometimes, but trust him, he has a great excuse. On Sunday (July25), the pop star playfully responded to Lance Bass' social media post teasing him for his delayed response.

But let's back up, shall we? The banter actually started hours earlier when Bass decided to prank his boy band besties with an old TikTok challenge to celebrate the 20th anniversary of NSYNC's third and final album, Celebrity.

In the clip, he FaceTimes each of his bandmates, only to tell them he's too busy to talk right now and asks them to call him back later before quickly hanging up. The stunt worked on Chris Kirkpatrick. It worked on Joey Fatone. Even JC Chasez, who was sitting right next to Bass at dinner. But when he tried to FaceTime Timberlake...there was no answer.

Cut to a few hours later, when Bass jumped on yet another TikTok trend to poke fun at the situation. "When JT finally responds to my text..." he wrote on screen dancing along to the popular TikTok meme of the moment. ("It's the little things," he added in the caption.)

However, Timberlake had the last word in the post's comments section. "Once those babies show up… your unavailability will all make sense, bro," he wrote, using three laughing emojis to make clear there was no beef between the singers. "Touché!" Bass replied upon seeing his pal's comment.

While Timberlake and wife Jessica Biel share two sons, Silas and Phineas, Bass and husband Michael Turchin are currently expecting a pair of twins via surrogate.

For the record, while Bass has pointed out several times that he and all his former bandmates remain close, the quintet were last seen together publicly in 2018 when they received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And while Chasez, Fatone, Kirkpatrick, and Bass regularly reunite, Timberlake has only joined them once — for a performance at the 2013 MTV VMAs, where he was presented with that year's Video Vanguard Award.

Check out the *NSYNC-related missed connections below.

Pop Stars From the 1990s and 2000s: Then & Now

 

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