Justin Timberlake appeared to hint at ex Britney Spears’ memoir during a performance in Las Vegas.
Back in October, Spears’ memoir, titled The Woman in Me, revealed that she had an abortion during her relationship with Timberlake, who she dated from 1998 to 2002, and included infidelity rumours from both parties. His song “Cry Me A River” is known as a breakup anthem, which many believe to be about Spears.
Before he performed the song on Wednesday 13 December, Timberlake paused to address the audience, saying “no disrespect.”
Timberlake and Spears were in a highly-publicised relationship for three years, after meeting on the set of the All-New Mickey Mouse Club in 1992. They first went public with their romance in 1999, before they were spotted at multiple events together, including the iconic moment when they wore matching denim outfits to the 2001 American Music Awards.
The pair officially broke up in 2002, shortly after NSYNC released their hit tune, “Cry Me a River”. At the time, the music video for the song – which featured a woman with blonde hair - sparked rumours that he and Spears broke up because she allegedly cheated on him.
However, Timberlake opted not to address cheating speculation in 2002, while revealing during an interview with Barbara Walters that he and Spears agreed not to not to “say specifically why” they went their separate ways.
“We’re not perfect. I don’t judge anybody. It’s just young love. It was a very intense relationship, that’s for sure,” he said at the time.
The following year, Spears opened up about the breakup in an interview with Diane Sawyer. When Sawyer asked her what she had done wrong in the relationship, the “Toxic” singer said: “I think everyone has a side of their story to make them feel a certain way… and I’m not technically saying he’s wrong, but I’m not technically saying he’s right either.”
In an excerpt of her book, Spears also wrote about her decision to get an abortion after she became pregnant while dating Timberlake.
“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated,” she wrote about the pregnancy. “But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
While opening up about her decision to have an abortion, she implied that she did so because that NSYNC frontman had wanted her to. “I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby. I don’t know if that was the right decision,” she wrote in the excerpt. “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.”
“To this day, it’s one of the most agonising things I have ever experienced in my life,” Spears wrote.
Since their split, the two singers have gone on to have separate relationships. Timberlake married actor Jessica Biel in 2012 and they have two sons: Silas, eight, and Phineas, two. Meanwhile, Spears went on to have two children - Sean 18, and Jayden, 17 - with her now ex-husband, Kevin Federline. She married fitness instructor Sam Asghari in June 2022, but the pair announced their divorce in August of this year.
