Afrigather Britney Spears Had An Abortion With Justin Timberlake
Earlier than there was Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani, or Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz and even Beyoncé and Jay-Z, there was Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.
Pop music’s golden couple was just about the cutest factor you ever did see once they started courting in 1999. They shared anecdotes about how they developed mutual crushes whereas working collectively as tweens in 1992 on The All-New Mickey Mouse Membership (he was her first kiss!) earlier than reconnecting seven years later.
On the time, Spears was about to interrupt by means of together with her multiplatinum debut …Child One Extra Time that made college uniforms cool and oldsters aghast and Timberlake was exhausting at work on ‘N Sync‘s comply with as much as their equally profitable self-titled launch.
Theirs was a connection stuffed with all the eagerness and pleasure of past love—”I used to be infatuated together with her from the second I noticed her,” he later instructed GQ—plus a heady rush of success with the pair dominating in an area additionally occupied by the likes of Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Destiny’s Child and the Backstreet Boys.
They carried out in the course of the Super Bowl halftime show and appeared collectively on Saturday Evening Reside. They collected extra trophies than they might presumably show of their shared Hollywood Hills residence and nearly managed to make matching denim-on-denim-on-denim look good on the American Music Awards. (They did not, but when anybody might have pulled off denims as formal put on it could have been music’s flaxen-tressed energy duo.)
“I like him from the underside of my coronary heart. So far as love is worried, with him, an excessive amount of just isn’t sufficient. He is all the pieces,” Spears mused in a September 2001 interview with The Guardian. “It’s a deeper love now than after I was youthful. Like, we have gone by means of a lot collectively and we have identified one another since we have been 12 years previous. We all know one another inside and outside.”
Till someday, seemingly out of the blue, they simply did not, information of their March 2002 breakup tearin’ up followers’ hearts.
KMazur/WireImage
A long time earlier than joint break up statements posted to social media have been customary, 21-year-old Timberlake and 20-year-old Spears have been left to clarify what the f–k occurred again and again and over once more. (And as soon as extra, for good measure, Spears divulging their relationship drama and their decision to get an abortion amid other truths in her soon-to-be-released memoir The Woman in Me.)
Virtually instantly, dishonest rumors fashioned, Timberlake serving to to fan these specific flames with cagey quotes about how he “promised her” he would not share what occurred and his November 2002 launch of “Cry Me a River,” a story a few heartbroken, wronged man that the singer said “was written in a time of ache.”
We love these merchandise, and we hope you do too. E! has affiliate relationships, so we could get a small share of the income out of your purchases. Gadgets are offered by the retailer, not E!. Costs are correct as of publish time.
The Lady in Me by Britney Spears
On this powerful memoir, Britney tells her personal story on her personal phrases.
For Spears, the battle was extra than simply dropping the individual she’d been envisioning endlessly with since she was a teen. “I am nonetheless hurting, however I’m attempting to see it as an expertise,” she reflected to The Sun in 2002. “The worst factor is everybody needs to speak to me about it. In every single place I’m going individuals are asking how I’m.”
Principally, as Spears mirrored in an Instagram post in April 2020, some 18 years after the actual fact, “We had one of many world’s greatest breakups.”
With Timberlake keen to advertise his new solo effort Justified (“At this level in my life, should you actually wish to know who my girlfriend is, it is these 13 songs on that CD,” he famous to Barbara Walters), the post-separation press gauntlet wasn’t all that unhealthy for him.
“It is humorous as a result of each time somebody interviews me they’re like, ‘You recognize, hear, I actually hate to ask this, however…'” he told E! on the time, explaining why he was unbothered by the usual line of questioning. “For me, I am actually detached.”
In spite of everything, he did have a product to push, his preliminary single off his November 2002 debut disc, “Like I Love You,” solely reaching No. 11 on the Billboard charts. And if that meant sharing anecdotes in regards to the heartbreaking finish to his first-ever critical romance, he’d do it with an enthralling smile and simply sufficient transparency for followers to deduce that he was the wronged celebration.
Scott Gries/ImageDirect
“I bear in mind after we determined we have been going to go our separate methods, we sat down and I stated to her, ‘If there’s ever a second the place you ever want me, you’ll be able to relaxation assured that I can be there, as a result of I like you as an individual and I’ll at all times love you,'” he recalled, talking with Walters for 20/20 in November 2002. “However I additionally stated, ‘Look, it doesn’t matter what we are saying at this level individuals are going to invest issues, and I might actually get myself in a horrible place if I used to be to say one thing and someone misinterpreted, as a result of that occurs on a regular basis.'”
He definitely did not wish to give anybody the fallacious concept, he continued, so he’d simply share that he’d “promised her that I would not say particularly why we broke up.”
Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock
However ought to anybody care to learn between the strains, he was comfortable to play a couple of bars from “Horrible Lady,” a brand new monitor he’d written that included the lyrics, “I assumed our love was so sturdy / I suppose I used to be lifeless fallacious / However to have a look at it positively, hey lady / No less than you gave me one other tune a few horrible girl.”
Requested outright in regards to the dishonest accusations, he instructed Walters, “Actually, I imply, , we’re not excellent. I do not decide anyone.”
There have been loads of others to deal with that.
In “Framing Britney Spears,” the 2020 episode of FX’s The New York Instances Presents docu-series, we have been all reminded how crassly the twentysomethings’ intercourse life was mentioned within the wake of their break up and simply how simply Spears was slotted into the position of villain.
Timberlake might hardly handle a straight face when Walters introduced up a quote Spears had given saying “good morals imply ready to have intercourse till after you have been married.” Requested in the event that they’d “lived up” to that messaging throughout their relationship, he cracked, “Positive,” with amusing earlier than staring immediately into the digicam and repeating himself: “Positive.”
He’d already addressed the topic two months earlier on the Star and Buc Wild Morning Present. When requested, “Did you f–k Britney Spears, sure or no?”, he responded, “Okay, I did it!” prompting the gaggle of bros to interrupt out in raucous cheers.
By the point he lined Particulars in December 2002, the magazine was proclaiming, “Can we ever forgive Justin Timberlake for all that sissy music? Hey…at the very least he acquired into Britney’s pants.”
The age of enlightenment this was not. With the #MeToo motion and phrases like “sex-positivity” nonetheless a few a long time off, Timberlake was hailed as a conquering hero; Spears, a questionable position mannequin for her younger followers.
And although the “Generally” singer remained silent on what did or didn’t happen behind closed doorways on the time, she confessed to Diane Sawyer throughout that much-maligned-in-retrospect November 2003 interview, “It was a extremely bizarre time.”
Listening to her former boyfriend gleefully dish on “what we did collectively, sexually and stuff,” she continued, “I simply felt very exploited and really bizarre. I used to be like, ‘Why is he occurring these reveals and so they’re asking him and he is speaking?’ You recognize, however I am positive, identical to proper now, you are asking me about it and I am speaking about it and it simply form of comes out.”
As a result of there was little time for the pop princess to keep away from the topic. She had her personal disc to advertise—2003’s Within the Zone serving as her fourth launch in lower than 5 years. Solely now she’d should do it while dodging questions on her ex-boyfriend’s music.
“Cry Me a River,” Justified‘s second single a monitor largely assumed to be an autobiographical tackle their break up probably would have eclipsed its predecessor “Like I Love You,” with its lyrics alone: “You do not have to say what you probably did / I already know, I came upon from him.” However when the video dropped, that includes 18-year-old blonde model-actress Lauren Hastings, a Spears doppelgänger right down to the newsboy hat, nicely, it appeared awfully deliberate. Instantly Timberlake had a runaway hit and Spears had some ‘splaining to do.
Timberlake had reached out to tell her that he’d forged a lookalike to seem reverse him, nevertheless it was nonetheless powerful to course of. Seeing the video whereas on trip, “I used to be form of in denial, like, I went into this entire denial section or no matter,” she defined to Sawyer. “I do not wish to decide him or something like that, as a result of that is the best way he needed to cope with what occurred. And that is tremendous.”
Nonetheless, she continued, “I do know if I used to be in a relationship and one thing occurred, I simply, I could not actually go there.” Positive, her single “Everytime” by which she sang “My weak spot prompted you ache / And this tune’s my sorry” appeared to be about Timberlake. However, as she stammered to Sawyer, “I am going to let the tune simply converse for itself.”
Globe Pictures/Mediapunch/Shutterstock
Not that it mattered. The narrative had already been set.
A September 2002 Us Weekly cowl requested, “Did she betray him,” and each motion the 2 comprised of there was seen as a tactical transfer of their ongoing conflict.
When Spears stepped out in a shirt proclaiming “Dump Him,” followers speculated the directive was aimed toward Timberlake’s then-rumored flame Alyssa Milano. A hang around with Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter? An try to make her ex jealous.
Then got here the “Cry Me River” of all of it. Regardless of Timberlake claiming in the course of the TRL drop that “the video just isn’t about her,” it positive appeared that approach. “Individuals handled her like she was the varsity slut and he was the quarterback,” former MTV VJ Dave Holmes recalled of the hysteria on “Framing Britney Spears,” noting how Timberlake “weaponized the concept for considered one of his singles.”
By the point Spears sat down with Sawyer practically a yr later, she’d all however been labeled the transgressor. As the veteran journalist put it in her interrogation, “You probably did one thing that prompted him a lot ache, a lot struggling. What did you do?”
Doing her finest to stay diplomatic, Spears merely responded, “We each are actually younger and it was form of ready to occur. I’ll at all times love him…he’s such an amazing individual,”
As for whether or not she’d been unfaithful, she instructed Sawyer rigorously, “I feel everybody has a facet of their story to make them really feel a sure approach…and I am not technically saying he is fallacious however I am not technically saying he is proper both.”
Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Technically, that is the closest we ever acquired to a solution, neither facet elaborating additional. Till now, with Spears alleging in her memoir that Timberlake cheated on her.
As for Timberlake, he continued to reference his well-known ex lengthy after she’d moved on, first with now-ex-husband Kevin Federline, dad to her sons Sean, 18, and Jayden, 17, then a sequence of nearly Mr. Rights together with estranged husband Sam Asghari.
Talking on Spears’ now-infamous kiss with Madonna on the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, Timberlake instructed Ellen DeGeneres, “I do not suppose I used to be disgusted. I feel I used to be simply not impressed. I imply, I anticipated much more. It is the VMAs, ?”
And in 2006, 4 years after their breakup, when he was greater than three years deep into his romance with Cameron Diaz, he returned to the tried-and-true scorned man archetype, dropping “What Goes Round Comes Round” on his sophomore solo album and reflecting on his large breakup in a chat with GQ.
Kevin Mazur/WireImage
“Once we initially parted methods I felt like she had a few alternatives to simply kind of stick up for me, and she or he did not,” he defined of that preliminary resentment. “Which is fine. However at the moment, , I fought again, and that is the best way I fought again. I used my thoughts. I got here up with a tune.”
As an additional advantage, his technique helped remodel his personal curly-haired, squeaky clear boy band popularity. “One minute Timberlake was a forgotten relic of teeny pop, the following he is making the video for ‘Cry Me A River’ by which he is stalking his ex and creeping up behind her to smell her hair,” GQ wrote in a 2006 profile proclaiming him their Worldwide Man of the Yr. “And throughout the area of a yr nobody might give two hoots about his New Mickey Mouse Membership beginnings. Timberlake all of a sudden turned Trousersnake and he’d completed the inconceivable—he’d grow to be cool.”
That he’d completed it on the expense of his former girlfriend now appears fairly plain because of the advantage of hindsight. With “Framing Britney Spears” digging not solely into her difficult 13-year conservatorship, but in addition the harassment and slut-shaming she endured following her break up with Timberlake, even he needed to admit he hadn’t dealt with the state of affairs all that nicely.
As followers flooded social media demanding he apologize for utilizing the narrative of their breakup to assist launch his solo profession, Timberlake issued a mea culpa on Instagram, taking possession “for the time in my life the place my actions contributed to the issue, the place I spoke out of flip, or didn’t converse up for what was proper.” (He additionally provided a direct apology to Spears and 2004 Tremendous Bowl halftime co-performer Janet Jackson, who bore the brunt of the criticism for the nipple shield-bearing mishap that launched the time period “wardrobe malfunction.”)
LUCY NICHOLSON/AFP/Getty Photographs
Amongst these paying consideration was Spears, who way back let her teenage sweetheart off the hook for his transgressions, typically utilizing his songs because the soundtrack for her Instagram dance movies and even admitting that he remains on the listing of her dream collaborators.
“Every individual has their story and their tackle different individuals’s tales !!!!” she cryptically shared in 2021, a yr earlier than she inked her memoir deal to present us, give us extra particulars about her previous. “Keep in mind, it doesn’t matter what we expect we find out about an individual’s life it’s nothing in comparison with the precise individual dwelling behind the lens.”
(This story was initially revealed on Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021 at 12 a.m. PT.)
