As revelations from Britney Spears’ upcoming memoir, The Woman in Me, put her and ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake’s relationship back in the spotlight, an old interview has resurfaced in which the ’NSync member slammed his former partner.
“I dated Britney half my life but I don’t know that person anymore. I’m not sure I knew her before,” Timberlake, 42, told journalist Robert Haskell in a 2006 profile. (Screenshots of the interview were shared via X, formerly known as Twitter, by a Spears fan account on Thursday, October 19.)
Timberlake continued: “If I was writing an article about [Britney], I would not be able to fight the urge to write every dirty thing about her.”
The resurfaced article is not the first time that Timberlake has raised eyebrows for his commentary on Spears, 41. During a 2003 appearance on 20/20, Barbara Walters asked Timberlake whether Spears had “kept her promise to wait [to have sex] until marriage.” In response, Timberlake infamously burst out laughing.
That same year, the music video for Timberlake’s song “Cry Me a River” — which featured a Spears lookalike and seemed to suggest that she’d been unfaithful to Timberlake — fueled public speculation that the pair’s relationship had ended due to infidelity on Spears’ part.
Timberlake and Spears met as children on the set of The Mickey Mouse Club and went on to become the “It Couple” of the late ‘90s and the early aughts. The duo confirmed their romance in 1999 and continued to date until 2002.
In The Woman in Me, which hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24, Spears claims that Timberlake ended their relationship via text message, an insider confirmed to Us Weekly on Thursday. The “Gimme More” musician recalls feeling “clinically in shock” and “devastated” by how Timberlake handled the breakup.
Elsewhere in the tell-all, Spears claimed that Timberlake cheated on her “a couple of times” while they were together and got her pregnant.
“Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” Spears wrote in an excerpt published by People on Tuesday, October 17. “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. 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.”
Spears also owned up to a betrayal of her own in the book. The source confirmed to Us that Spears admitted in the memoir to making out with dancer and choreographer Wade Robson while she was dating Timberlake. Spears wrote that she and Timberlake “agreed to move past” the infidelity.
As the release date for The Woman in Me looms near, another insider told Us on Thursday that Timberlake is trying to steer clear of the drama.
“Justin will always be supportive of Britney and all of her endeavors, but he’s trying to distance himself from her upcoming book,” the source shared. “It’s not something he’s focusing too much on in terms of anything she might discuss when it comes to their former relationship.”
After his relationship with Spears, Timberlake went on to wed Jessica Biel in 2012. The couple share sons Silas, 8, and Phineas, 3.
Spears, meanwhile, shares sons Sean, 18, and Jayden, 17, with ex-husband Kevin Federline. She recently separated from Sam Asghari, who filed for divorce from Spears in August after 14 months of marriage.
The Woman in Me hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24.
