Britney Spears’s new memoir, The Woman in Me, claims that she has experienced the dreaded text message breakup.
Spears claims in the book (which The New York Times previewed before its scheduled October 24 release date) that she was left “devastated” when her ex-boy bandmate, Justin Timberlake, started their breakup by text message. She claims that, in the meantime, she was “comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood,” but the media had painted her as a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy.”
She first got to know Timberlake as they costarred as Mouseketeers on Disney’s revival of The Mickey Mouse Club. Years before they would enthrall the public with their relationship, matching denim clothes, and final, widely reported breakup, they even shared a kiss during a game of truth or dare.
“A woman who looks like me cheats on him and he wanders around sad in the rain,” she explained, summarizing the scenario of Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” music video, which was released in 2002 following their divorce. The track was a hit from Timberlake’s debut solo album after leaving NSync, Justified.
Furthermore, it’s not a coincidence that the man the newsboy-capped Britney avatar is seeing bears some resemblance to Wade Robson, the choreographer for both Spears and ‘NSync as well as a long-time suspected love interest of Spears: According to reports in her memoir, Spears claims that she heard suspicions about Timberlake’s infidelity and kissed Robson during their relationship days.
Following their breakup, Spears claims that she was coerced by her father and management group to participate in a now-famous 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer, in which the reporter asked her, scandalized, “what happened to your clothes?!” and “what did you do” to Timberlake.
“I think everyone has a side of their story and to make them feel a certain way, to make them feel. I’m not technically saying he’s wrong, but I’m not technically saying he’s right, either,” Spears answered when Sawyer said Timberlake implied that she had “betrayed their relationship.”
