NKOTB Recreate Group Photo from Over 35 Years Ago: ‘We Really Couldn’t Stop Laughing’

The New Kids on the Block took a choreographed walk down memory lane.

During the group’s recent four-night cruise to the Bahamas, NKOTB bandmates Donnie Wahlberg, Joey McIntyre, Danny Wood and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight recreated one of their earliest photos for fans aboard the ship.

The original black-and-white photograph — which was first taken in 1986, two years before the then-teenagers rocketed to fame with the release of their Hangin’ Tough album — captured the young boyband posing in sweatshirts with their names ironed-on the front, crisp white pants and their classic ’80s hairstyles.

For the updated shot, the New Kids donned colorful, look-a-like outfits and hairstyles, and struck a matching boyband pose.

“We had so much fun getting ready and seeing it all come to life,” Wahlberg, 53, tells PEOPLE exclusively about their throwback moment. “We really couldn’t stop laughing, which is really in the spirit of the band. We are all about having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously.”

COURTESY OF NKOTB

“I’d spoken to the group about recreating the old photo, but it wasn’t until I knew that I could get the wigs made in our old hairstyles that we fully committed to doing it,” says Wahlberg, who stars on CBS’s Friday night police drama Blue Bloods. “The hair really put it over the top. Rat tails and mullets included!”

The 11th NKOTB cruise — which sailed Oct. 20-24 after being postponed in April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — featured nightly theme parties on the ship’s lido deck, allowing the group to get creative and nostalgic with their outfits. On night two, a “Bring Back the Time” party (a nod to the band’s early 2022 single of the same name), presented the perfect opportunity for the costume reveal.

COURTESY OF NKOTB

“It was a real team effort. A fan helped make the sweatshirts. My hairstylist from Blue Bloods made the wigs. No detail was overlooked,” he says.

Wahlberg says the idea to recreate their 1986 look bubbled up from social media, when the long-forgotten picture was posted online a few months earlier.

“The initial fan reaction to the old photo is actually what inspired us to do this throwback look,” he says. “They were so excited to see an old photo of us, that nobody has ever really seen before, so it kind of sparked the idea to recreate this one day.”

As expected, the Blockheads (the group’s affectionate name for devoted NKOTB fans) aboard the boat were surprised and thrilled to see the boyband’s cheeky nod back to the beginning of their careers.

“When we finally did the recreation, the fans reacted with all the feels. Joy, laughter, tears, you name it,” says Wahlberg. “Our fans love the nostalgia just as much as we do. It’s worth all of the effort it takes to pull this off, when we see their reaction to it!”

This isn’t the first time the New Kids have gone back into their vast boyband vault for inspiration. In 2019, the group teamed up with members of New Edition and *NSYNC for their “Boys in the Band’ video, where they recreated the outfits and choreography from their 1998 Hangin’ Tough video.

In November 2021, NKOTB and New Edition also took the stage at the American Music Awards for a “Battle of Boston” set, which marked the first time the two iconic boybands performed together.

The groups, which both formed in Boston in the ’80s, each performed a medley of their greatest hits, which NKOTB kicked off by singing “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” in coordinating black outfits and a choreographed dance routine.

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