Timbaland has realized that maybe it’s not too late to apologize — and he’s walking back his comments about Britney Spears.
“I apologize to the Britney fans and her,” Timbaland, 51, said during an Instagram Live on Tuesday, November 7. He subsequently read a comment from a fan that questioned his attitude toward women. “Yes, ‘You know about respecting women?’ Hell yeah.”
The producer was slammed by fans after his comments from the “Sounds Architects: A Producer Conversation” panel at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. last month resurfaced. During the event, an audience member pointed out that Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” — which Timbaland produced — is “making headlines again” after the release of Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me.
“Yeah, man, she going crazy, right?” Timbaland said of Spears, 41, in the video, which was circulating via X (formerly known as Twitter). He added that he wanted to call Timberlake, 42, and say, “JT, you gotta put a muzzle on that girl.”
Spears’ memoir, released in October, extensively covered her relationship with Timberlake, who she dated from 1999 to 2002. In the book, she alleged that Timberlake encouraged her to get an abortion after she found out she was pregnant with their baby.
“I agreed not to have the baby,” she wrote. “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.”
She claimed that they both cheated on each other, though the “Señorita” singer implied in 2003 that it was her infidelity that ended their relationship. A Spears lookalike was hired to portray Timberlake’s cheating girlfriend in the “Cry Me a River” music video.
Timberlake ended their relationship via a text message to Spears, she wrote. She noted that she felt like she was portrayed as the “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” when she was “clinically in shock” and “devastated” over their breakup. “I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood,” she wrote.
A source exclusively told Us Weekly that Timberlake is “disappointed” Spears decided to air their “dirty laundry” more than two decades later. “Justin regrets that he hurt Britney. He was young,” another insider told Us. “He thinks Britney has every right to tell her story and hopes they can move on now.”
Days before the book was released, Spears said that she did not mean “to offend” anyone with her memoir.
“My book’s purpose was not to offend anyone by any means,” she wrote via Instagram on October 20. “That was me then … that is in the past!!! It’s a beautiful clean slate from here!!! I am here to establish it that way for the rest of my entire life!!! Either way, that is the last of it and s–t happens. This is actually a book I didn’t know needed to be written, although some might be offended, it has given me closure on all things for a better future.”
Timberlake has not publicly addressed Spears’ claims about their relationship, but he turned off his Instagram comments following the book’s release.
