JC Chasez Has Been Busy Writing Two Musicals — and Dancing with Cats (Exclusive)

JC Chasez knows it's been a minute since fans have seen him, but that's about to change thanks to a group of dancing cats.

“A lot of people haven't seen me in a while,” Chasez, 46, tells PEOPLE over Zoom. “I don't put my name on a lot of things and that's for a reason. If I don't see any sense in it, I don't really mess with it. But if it looks fun, and if I'm into it, I do it.”

But, luckily for those who have been waiting on the *NSYNC alum's next move, there are two things in particular that have felt worthwhile enough for him to be part of as of late — a pair of musicals he’s been workshopping over the past few years, and a band. But it’s not the band you might be thinking of. 

Chasez has teamed up with Meow Mix (with a campaign from Publicis’ PS One and creatively led by BBH US) for a new ad promoting wet cat food, where he joins forces with the Tabby 5 — a group of performing cats that take him right back to his boyband roots. 

“A million people can say, ‘Hey, we got this idea and it's a boy band.’ And you're like, ‘Yes, I've heard that before. Yes, I've heard that before.’ But when they go, ‘Listen, we have a boy band made of cats and the cats are going to be dancing.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, let's do that,' he laughs.

With a pair of musicals in his back pocket, the exclusive tease of a potential concept album for one of them, and another project he can’t say too much about coming in the near future, Chasez is opening up to PEOPLE about all that’s happening in his world — and the five dancing felines that are helping him sell some cat chow.

Were you impressed by the execution of the ad?

What I loved about it is they were just having fun with it. Again, that's the whole reason for doing it. You get a million offers that say, 'Hey, let's do a boy band. Let's do a boy band.' And you're like, 'I've seen that 1,000 times.' So the fact that they straight up had this kind of thing going on, I just loved it. I like when people have fun with it and they did, they created a great environment. The idea was fun, and I had a blast doing it.

I know you had a cat growing up. What’s your favorite memory being a cat owner?

Well, I mean, look, I've had a couple of cats. My first cat, she was named Muffy, and my family always rescues, so when we first got her, she was a little bit standoffish. And then it's those moments where you have those breakthroughs where they finally warm up to you, those are always going to be the best memories lying on the couch and watching TV or something, and all of a sudden after being very distant, you have that breakthrough and the cat comes over and it's like, 'Yeah, we're cool now. Oh, this is the love, man.'

This ad spot looks like something you could've danced along with yourself. Did it give you any flashbacks — pointing at a camera, mouthing the words? 

Being with the director, he's basically like, 'Give me that.' He just was full on, 'We just need you to channel that.' So we did a trillion takes, and it's very handy. But again, that was the fun part about it. The first time I heard the track, I think that struck me. It was like, we've been working on this, and the imagery I love, it's funny, it's great. It's a little bit wacky, and that is fun, but the first time I heard the track, I was like, 'Wow.' The sound is the [time] period, right? The sound takes you there instantly, exactly where you are when you hear that production, and that's what was fun to hear. It's like, 'Oh, it's now a thing. This is a moment in time that everyone can feel.' Without seeing it, you can hear it. And that I was like, 'Oh, it's identifiable.' And it was fun.

It’s cool to see you part of this ad, because so much of your career recently has been behind-the-scenes, grinding, working on these musicals. You spoke with Lance Bass about it on his Frosted Tips podcast, but could you give a teaser of how things are going in that process?

Well, it's funny you say that. So I've got two of them kind of working at the same time and met with a director last night for one of them who is trying to organize a reading for that. Last Friday we cut the last vocal for the other one, because there's different characters, and in order to hear everything, I demoed everything. I'm demoing all the characters originally, but you can't really hear what's going on when it's one voice singing every part. So had some other singers come in and got the last vocal put down on Friday for one of the characters.

So now what we're thinking about doing is we might, I don't know yet. We'll see. We were just going to shop it and say, 'Hey, this is a musical,' but we might actually put together a concept record we're talking about. Because once we got the last record, once we got the last vocal done, we were like, 'I mean, this is kind of a record, so should we?' Originally it was for shopping purposes, but now we might actually let more people hear. We'll see.

Do you have a timeline or is it more of a long-term goal?

When I first signed on, I was under the naïveté that it would be like an album cycle. That's not at all what it is, apparently. It's a long haul, but that doesn't bother me at all. Again, that's just work, which is fine. And the fun part is you just keep creating, because even with these pieces, they're not done. They're just at this stage, and the fun part is they'll get better. But as far as going the distance, I'm going the distance, I've gone this far, I'm going all the way.

PEOPLE published the 25th anniversary retrospective on the *NSYNC U.S. debut earlier this year, and the amount of feedback we got about you, and fans who just wanted to hear you sing the alphabet, was incredible. I know right now you’re on this musical grind, but do you ever find yourself working on music just for you still?

Well, right now it's been all musicals. There are two other things that are going to actually, well, I don't know if both will come out. I know one's going to come out. There's going to be something that comes out in the very near future that has my voice on it which will be fun, but I'm not supposed to talk about that yet.

With all the time that’s passed, could you see a sophomore album in your eventual future? 

I don't know. It honestly hasn't crossed my mind. It's kind of like when you commit to something, you're so focused on that, you know what I mean? That's the reality of it. Any job you take on, I commit. I'm all the way in. And so with these musicals, my voice is on them. My voice is going to be one of the characters. So it will live on some level. My voice will be on something, but it won't be the traditional sounding thing.

Now the new project will have more of a modern sound, but again, it's just not something I haven't thought of, to be honest with you. Everybody asks me, 'What are you working on? We need to hear you sing. We need to do you sing.' It's funny. And maybe it's a horrible thing. People take things for granted. My favorite thing is to create. I could care less about hearing myself. What's more important to me is putting something out there in the world. Just making something is more important to me.

What have you discovered about yourself in the process of making these musicals?

It's just a different world. And it's funny because when I first started, I had a preconceived notion about it, about the way it was supposed to sound, and the things that bothered me about it, and the things that I loved about it. They both softened in the process. It gave me a whole new respect for the kind of people that invest in this, because theater, as it turns out, is a very thankless job on some levels. There are some very smart storytellers and people out there are grinding, and they're not getting nearly the recognition. I mean, they're playing eight nights a week or eight shows a week, and they're benefiting, don't get me wrong. But in comparison to maybe another gig where they'd be playing eight nights a week, the compensation isn't the same.

There's been a lot of love for *NSYNC in hip-hop recently. JID, Post Malone and Jack Harlow all reference you. There's even the "Sailing" sample on Drake’s "TSU." Do you have a favorite *NSYNC sample or reference in recent years?

So when I was in my youth and when we were touring and working and things like that, I actually ended up befriending people that were part of the J Dilla camp. He turned out to be a really sweet human being and a relentlessly hard worker. The amount of material that he would just crank out and crank out and crank out, I think he ended up being... It was an honor to just be in that circle for a minute. And we weren't tight or anything like that, but just by approximation and a little bit of interaction, to be accepted in that circle for a little while was an honor.

What were your conversations with him like?

Honestly, it was always music, right? He would just load up a bajillion tracks on cassettes because he didn't want anybody getting a clean copy so he could make these, I mean, I guess it's the reference now, the mixtape. You just go, 'Hey, these are beat beats, beats, beats, beats. Which one do you like, is there anything that strikes you?' And that was the way of doing business back then. But he used to do call-outs and he did on all his kind-of mixtape samples. Just because we were talking at the time, working together. He did a call-out for *NSYNC, which was really sweet of him.

Another *NSYNC history question, there's this community online called the Lost Media Community and they keep track of missing pieces of media. The Bigger Than Life IMAX concert film being one of them. It came out in 2001 and has apparently not been released or seen since. For the niche group of fans that are searching, do you have a copy of this film? 

I don't know. The issue is everything I have that is from the band or whatever, it's literally just in boxes. It's somewhere. I'm sure that was a ton of work, by the way, because everybody thinks you just do the performance and that's the end of it. And that's only one aspect of it. Assembling the team to do it, and then preparing for it. And then the aftermath of after you have it in the can, now you have to mix it. But it's a special kind of mix. It's not a stereo mix. You're mixing IMAX. There's a bajillion speakers in there. So finding the balance between the instruments of five voices and the audience noise and the chaos. Mixing a concert record in IMAX is a lot of work. And I remember sitting in the IMAX room working on the mix and just going, how are we going to make this make sense? And look, everybody does it. It's just a lot of work. But it's more work than you think, by the way.

What are you most excited for in the year to come?

When I work on a project like this, or the project come out later, I'm one of those people, I'm stubborn. I only do the things that I want to do. And I know that sounds nuts because everybody's like, 'Do it all.' But I'm just not a do it all kind of person. I only do the things that I think are kind of fun or are interesting to me.