Britney Spears could “barely speak for months” following break-up with Justin Timberlake
Britney Spears has said she could “barely speak for months” following her break-up with Justin Timberlake in the early 2000s.
The pop singer opened up about her split from Timberlake in her new memoir The Woman In Me, which includes details about her abortion with the *NSYNC star and her infamous head-shaving incident in 2007.
Spears and Timberlake dated from 1999 to 2002, until the latter allegedly ended the relationship via text message.
“When Justin began making his first solo album, Justified [2002], he started being very standoffish with me,” Spears remembered in her book, released yesterday (October 24). “I think that was because he decided to use me as ammunition for his record, and so it made it awkward for him to be around me, staring at him with all that affection and devotion.
“Ultimately, he ended our relationship by text message while I was on the set for the video for the ‘Overprotected’ remix by Darkchild. After seeing the message as I sat in my trailer between takes, I had to go back out and dance.”
Spears went on to say that she was “devastated” by the break-up. “When I say, devastated, I mean, I could barely speak for months,” she wrote. “Whenever anyone asked me about him, all I can do is cry. I don’t know if I was clinically in shock, but it felt that way.”
While Spears was still getting over the relationship, Timberlake is said to have brought her a framed handwritten letter that she still keeps under her bed. “And at the end it said — it makes me want to cry to think about it — ‘I can’t breathe without you.’ Those are the last words in it,” she said in the book.
“It almost felt like I was suffocating, like I couldn’t breathe after all that happened. The thing is, though, even after I saw him and read the letter, I didn’t come out of the trance. He did all that, he came there to see me and I still couldn’t talk — to him or to anybody.”
When remembering her abortion in The Woman In Me, Spears claimed that Timberlake “definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy”, adding: “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
The book explores the pop star’s rise to fame, her music career and her experience of becoming a mother. It also sees Spears talk about her 13-year-long conservatorship in detail for the first time.
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Tom Skinner
NME
