2Gether's
SALT LAKE CITY—
"It doesn't really seem like my life anymore. I look back and think wow that's crazy!" Noah Bastian said.
As a teenager, Noah had a small role in "Johnny Tsunami," a film shot in Utah. An agent spotted Noah's potential and encouraged him to move to Los Angeles to seek more work.
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He followed her advice and, within a week of arriving, he'd landed a guest role on "The Young and the Restless." But an even bigger "break" was in store.
"A matter of two weeks I went from working in a hotel to being a fake pop icon to these kids," he said.
MTV cast Noah as "Chad Linus" in a boy band called 2ge+her. The group was custom-created for a feature length film to parody popular acts of the day like NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys.
Noah and the other members were catapulted into fame--or something like it--almost overnight.
Noah recalls that when filming began, "they were blasting our faces on the Jumbotron in Times Square, and hired a thousand girls to stand and hold signs saying, 'We love you!'"
The film premiered on MTV, and successful ratings prompted plans for an ongoing series. The marketing included two albums which made showings on Billboard charts. In spite of tongue-in-cheek lyrics and song titles such as "The Hardest Part of Breaking Up Is Getting Back Your Stuff," and "You Plus Me Equals Calculus," many of MTV's young fans embraced the group.
"You didn't know a lot about boy bands then. You saw Justin (Timberlake) on stage but you didn't get to go behind the scenes and talk to them, and that's what fans felt like they were doing with the show," Noah said.
2ge+her even opened several shows for Britney Spears. "When Britney came to Times Square it looked like the president was coming. So we got to be a part of that," Noah recalls.
But the good times ended as quickly as they began, when together's youngest member Michael Cuccione died unexpectedly. Micheal had been successfully treated for Hodgkin's Disease when a car accident sent him back to a hospital. Unforeseen complications took his life.
"MTV decided, along with us, that the show needed to end," Noah said.
In the decade since, Noah has landed rolls in small films such as "Ice Spiders" and "The Adventures of Food Boy." When asked what he's been up to he responded "Not a lot," before breaking into a hearty laugh.
Between acting gigs, he waits tables in a Tapas restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City.
"As an actor one of your most important skills to know is how to carry a tray, because you'll be doing that a lot," he said.
Noah says his days in 2ge+her were incredibly fun, but also says he wasn't prepared to handle Hollywood at age nineteen. He admits to making some professional missteps and says the "down time" he's gotten in Utah has treated him well.
But the rest may be coming to an end. A recent Facebook post by fellow former band members Alex Solowitz and Kevin Farley asked if fans might be interested in a 2ge+her reunion. The answer; a resounding yes.
In the past month a social media campaign for a 2ge+her reunion has caught the attention of TMZ, Perez Hilton and MTV.com.
"I swear this has to be the first time fans have taken something that was so dead and brought it back to life," Noah said.
In the past weeks, he's been in contact with the other members of the band. He says there are several ideas on the table, but nothing yet set in stone.
"I've learned the hard way that with Hollywood you dont get your hopes up for anything," he said.
Source: Fox 13 Now