Lance Bass and Joey Fatone are turning E!'s new Cocktail Wars into a low-friction hosting job after more than 30 years of knowing each other. The pair said the rhythm between them comes naturally, even as the show puts 3 mixologists through skill-based rounds for a $10,000 prize.
Joey Fatone put the working relationship bluntly: “When we work together, it is just so effortless.” He added, “I think that’s why we make such a great hosting team, because it’s easy to know exactly what you’re going to get with us.”
More than 30 years together
“We’ve known each other, gosh, well over 30 years…” Fatone said, and that history gives Cocktail Wars a built-in shorthand. He said, “I know when [Lance] is going to say something cheesy, [and] we can just kind of look at each other and know exactly what we’re thinking.”
That familiarity matters on a competition built around quick calls and faster reactions. Cocktail Wars puts contestants through skill-based challenges, then routes the results through Bass, Fatone and Melissa Brooke, the expert mixologist who evaluates the drinks. The format keeps the hosts in the middle of the action rather than parking them on the sidelines.
Melissa Brooke’s crash course
Bass said Brooke moved the pair past celebrity curiosity and into usable vocabulary fast. “We have been around the world, visited the best bars and clubs, and thought we had the best drinks we’ve ever had,” he said. “What can we learn?”
Fatone said he started looking at “free pouring” and “the wash line,” a useful signal that the show is teaching terminology as it goes. Bass said that helped them become “fake experts on the industry in a short amount of time,” which is the right level of self-awareness for a competition like this. The hosts are selling chemistry, but the show still needs them to sound like they know the difference between a casual pour and a judged one.
35 drinks at once
Bass said one challenge got unwieldy fast. “There was one [challenge] where they had to keep these little note cards and every card had a drink, from Pina Colada to an Old Fashioned, and they had to make as many of these drinks as possible within a certain amount of time,” he said. “Well, by the end, we probably had 35 drinks in front of [us] to taste.”
That volume is the pressure point for viewers who want to know how the competition works: multiple bartenders, multiple styles, and a tasting load that can swamp a panel if the round runs long. Bass said some contestants were “intense,” others were “relaxed,” some were “zen” and some were “singing,” which suggests the show is as much about temperament as technique.
Bass also brought one old bartending mistake into the conversation. He said he once tried bartending at a bar called Mugshots in New York, where his first drink order was a Coors Light on First Avenue in New York. He said he poured the Light in a beer with ice before being told, “So, Lance, you don’t scoop ice for a beer.”
For a series built on competence under pressure, that story does the job better than any glossy promo. Bass is not pretending he grew up behind the bar; he is learning in public, and Cocktail Wars looks designed to make that learning part of the appeal rather than a hidden weakness.
