Still tearin’ up her heart. Mandy Moore told James Corden about a particularly embarrassing encounter with Justin Timberlake that left her “scarred” during a Tuesday, November 15, appearance on The Late Late Show. Watch her tell the funny tale in the video above!
Corden, a self-proclaimed “boy band fanatic,” couldn’t help but press the This Is Us actress, 32, about her teenage years as a pop star who toured with both the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync.
Moore — who burst onto the pop music scene in 1999 with the release of her first single, “Candy” — had a wonderful experience hitting the road with two of the biggest boy bands ever, but there is one memory from that time in her life that still haunts her.
“I’m a terrible dancer, but I had background dancers at the time because that’s what you did, and I remember distinctly one time walking backstage, and I didn’t really see much of the guys because I was the measly opening act. Nobody cared about me,” she told Corden, 38, of her gig with ‘NSync. “But Justin Timberlake was there and somehow there was a conversation about feet or foot size. They were comparing shoe [size]. And all the background dancers and the ‘NSync background dancers and my background dancers [were there], and I stroll up at 15, like, freaking out that Justin Timberlake is there.”
While she was initially thrilled to be hanging out backstage with JT and the boys, Moore explained that their interaction was not what she had hoped for.
“He was like, ‘You have big feet for a girl,'” she recalled him saying. “I’m sure he doesn’t remember this at all but I was so impressionable, and I thought the world of him and he was on a pedestal. I mean, 16 years later it stuck with me, so it really scarred me emotionally.”
The “In My Pocket” singer said that she was a size 10, but added, “I’m 5-foot-10!”
“I [was] going through puberty at the time,” she continued. “Yeah, it was embarrassing.”
Though Timberlake’s words have stuck with Moore for more than a decade, the Walk to Remember star said that getting over the Grammy winner’s comment about her feet was not the hardest part of her early years in the limelight.
“Dancing [was the hardest part],” she told Corden without hesitation. “I have no rhythm. I’m super awkward. I think the powers that be realized very early on, You know what, you should just have background dancers.”
Watch the video above.
