Justin Timberlake Dumped Britney Spears With a 2-Word Text During Grueling Video Shoot

Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were one of the biggest couples of the early aughts. When they split in 2002, Spears felt that she bore the brunt of the public backlash. She has revealed that Timberlake ended their relationship with a two-word text message as she shot a music video. The director spoke about the way this impacted the shoot.

Justin Timberlake broke up with Britney Spears over text

In 2002, Spears shot a music video for the Darkchild remix of “Overprotected.” Towards the end of the lengthy shoot, Spears vanished.

“It was toward the end of the second day,” the video’s director, Chris Applebaum, said on the Hyperfixated with Joseph Shepherd podcast, adding, “We were in, like, hour 20 or something like that. We were doing that last rain sequence. We were waiting and we were all set up and I didn’t know where [Spears] was.”

She refused to leave her trailer, resulting in Applebaum attempting to get her out.

“And everyone’s like, ‘We’ve been asking. We’ve been knocking on the door. She’s not coming out,’” he said. “Time passed and I’m like, ‘How are we going to get this done?’ Finally, I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go and f***ing get Britney myself out of the trailer.’”

He said that the mood was bleak in her trailer.

“I walked in and Britney was there. And I was like, ‘Is everything OK?’ And everyone’s solemn and … they have iron curtain eyes. They’re really dark.”

Applebaum said Spears then showed him a text. She later revealed that it read, “It’s over.” Applebaum told her that while he would understand if she didn’t want to keep filming, she could try to use it to show Timberlake what he lost.

“The other thing you could do … you could get back out there and do a performance that’s so hot that you show him that he just lost — he just messed up the best thing he’s ever had,” he recalled telling her. “She … was like, ‘That’s it! You’re right! Let’s do that.’”

Britney Spears hated Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me a River’

After their breakup, Timberlake released the song “Cry Me a River.” The music video featured a woman who looks like Spears, which turned the public against her.

“He released the video for his song ‘Cry Me a River,’ in which a woman who looks like me cheats on him and he wanders around sad in the rain,” she wrote in her book The Woman in Me. “In the news media, I was described as a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy. The truth: I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood. May I just say that on his explosive album and in all the press that surrounded it, Justin neglected to mention the several times he’d cheated on me?”

Spears said the song “shamed” her. She wasn’t sure how to change the narrative around her, even though she knew the truth of their relationship.

“I felt there was no way at the time to tell my side of the story,” she said, adding, “I couldn’t explain, because I knew no one would take my side once Justin had convinced the world of his version. I don’t think Justin realized the power he had in shaming me.”

She wrote that she still didn’t think he understood.