Britney Spears appears to have hit back at Justin Timberlake’s comment about meaning “no disrespect” during a recent performance of his song “Cry Me A River”.
Timberlake, 42, released the song in 2002, after his three-year relationship with Spears, 42, ended.
The track was allegedly inspired by their break-up and its music video featured a woman with blonde hair – sparking rumours that Spears had cheated on the NSYNC frontman.
Over a decade later, the “Toxic” singer addressed the media fallout triggered by Timberlake’s break-up anthem in her memoir The Woman in Me.
Spears alleged that the media portrayed her as “a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy”, when in reality, their split left her “comatose in Louisiana” while Timberlake was allegedly “happily running around Hollywood”.
‘The Woman in Me’ sold 1.1m copies in its first week— (AFP via Getty Images)
Timberlake seemingly addressed the reignited controversy over “Cry Me A River” during a surprise concert at the opening of the Fontainebleau resort and casino in Las Vegas on Wednesday (13 December). The show was Timberlake’s second time on stage since Spears’s memoir was released, amid renewed scrutiny over their relationship.
Wednesday’s show marked the first time Timberlake has performed the song since the book was published, as the singer clarified he meant “no disrespect” by it.
Spears appeared to hit back at Timberlake’s comment with a post on Instagram on Thursday (14 December). The Grammy winner shared a clip of a leopard standing between two male pole dancers and a man performing a handstand against a wall.
Repeating the same phrase Timberlake used at the star-studded show in Vegas, Spears captioned her post: “I never mentioned how I beat him in basketball and he would cry... no disrespect.”
During their relationship, Spears and Timberlake famously wore basketball jerseys emblazoned with their nicknames for each other – Pinky and Stinky – at an NSYNC charity event in July 2001.
The Independent has contacted representatives for Timberlake and Spears for comment.
In her memoir, which sold over a million copies in its first week, Spears described the song’s video as “a woman who looks like me cheats on him and he wanders around sad in the rain”.
The music video’s director Francis Lawrence previously described “Cry Me A River” as a “kiss-off” song, adding that the word “Britney” was off-limits on the set.
Instead, he told Dazed, it was all about “implying certain things” by incorporating “little elements and details” throughout the video.
“In all honesty, one of the fun elements of the way we made ‘Cry Me a River’ was that Justin and I never said who it was about,” Lawrence said. “Not in the treatment, not in accepting it, not at that first meeting, not in the making of it... never.”
“That was part of the thing, there was just this unspoken agreement between us. Because [Justin and Britney] were on the same label; that’s part of the reason I thought the label would never, ever go for it,” he added. “It was all about implying certain things, there’s little elements and details (in the video) that play throughout and tie it in.”
In her book, Spears also revealed she had an abortion during her relationship with Timberlake, writing “I agreed not to have the baby” because “Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy”.
“I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby,” she wrote. “I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”
