Donnie Wahlberg swears he was never a 'bad boy' in New Kids on the Block: 'I'm good!'

"I was just trying to find myself and deal with all the fame and craziness, but also stick up for myself and my friends," he says.

Donnie Wahlberg would like to set the record straight on being the so-called “bad boy” of New Kids on the Block.

The Blue Bloods star, 55, explained in the new Paramount+ documentary Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands that, contrary to popular belief, his troublemaker persona within the band wasn't an accurate reflection of his actual personality.

“No, I don’t think I was ever a bad boy. I’m good!” Wahlberg declared. “I was just trying to find myself and deal with all the fame and craziness, but also stick up for myself and my friends.”

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While Wahlberg might not agree with his moniker, he did have his own run-in with the law during the band's early years. The "Step by Step" singer was arrested in 1991 for reportedly starting a fire in a Louisville, Ky., hotel, but the charges against him were later dismissed after he agreed to make public service videos about fire safety, drug abuse, and drunk driving, per the Washington Examiner.

During the documentary, NSYNC member Lance Bass also credited New Kids on the Block with being the first-ever boy band to create distinct “archetypes” for each of their members so that fans could easily pick and choose their favorites.

“Donnie was the bad boy. Jordan [Knight] was the matinée idol. Danny [Wood] was the workout, sports kid. John [Knight] was the sensitive kid,” Johnny Wright, a former manager of the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, added. “And you have that in Backstreet Boys and you have that in NSYNC.”

Bass saw the parallels within his group, too. “Justin [Timberlake] was the young heartthrob. Chris [Kirkpatrick] was the crazy one,” he recalled. “I was the shy one.”

He also explained how easy it was to adopt the persona that had been created for you. “You read it so many times, you just started falling into that trope,” Bass said. “And then you started feeling like, ‘Well, this isn’t me, but this is what people want!’”

Wahlberg isn’t the only boy bander who felt miscast as a bad boy. “I was the quote unquote bad boy,” Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean said, before admitting, “I’m the biggest pushover in the world. I have not a bad bone in my body.”

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Wahlberg previously revealed in a 2019 interview with Yahoo Entertainment that he considered his younger self to be “just as charitable” as he is now as an adult — it’s just that more people are paying attention to his good deeds these days. 

“If I went into a community of people shopping for Christmas, or if I donated food to a bank, it probably wouldn't get as much attention back then,” he said at the time. “The press, quite frankly, didn't really pay attention to that; it was far less eventful to talk about something charitable that I did then it would be to talk about me getting into a fight.” 

Wahlberg added, “I certainly have matured and grown up a lot, and I certainly can see why I might've had that reputation, but I definitely think I've always been a very generous person.”

Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands is streaming now on Paramount+.