Britney Spears appeared to make a subtle reference to her ex, Justin Timberlake, in her recent Instagram post. This post followed Timberlake’s performance of “Cry Me a River” at the Fontainebleau opening in Las Vegas, where he prefaced the song with “no disrespect.”
Sharing a video featuring a leopard between two pole-dancing men and a man standing upside down, Spears wrote in the caption, “Oh Jesus Christ, the stories… I could tell on the set of this one☝🏻!!! There’s always more to the story, and that’s not even half of it!!! It was shot in Arizona’s 120-degree heat 🥵… 2 different version videos were shot for this song… most boys say, ‘OH I’M SHOOK’!!! Psss, I never mentioned how I beat him in basketball 🏀, and he would cry… no disrespect 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️!!!”
Spears and Timberlake, 42, gained attention for wearing matching jerseys with nicknames “Pinky” and “Stinky” during *NSYNC’s charity event in July 2001. Despite dating from 1999 to 2002, their relationship continues to make headlines, especially after the release of Spears’ memoir, “The Woman in Me.”
In the memoir, Spears opened up about their relationship, including the revelation of having an abortion after becoming pregnant with Timberlake’s child. She also addressed “Cry Me a River” and its music video, expressing how it portrayed her negatively in the public eye while she was “comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.”
While Timberlake hasn’t explicitly confirmed Spears as the inspiration for the song, his 2018 memoir, “Hindsight: & All the Things I Can’t See in Front of Me,” revealed that he wrote “Cry Me a River” out of feeling “scorned.” He mentioned, “I’ve been scorned. I’ve been pissed off. I wrote ‘Cry Me a River’ in two hours. I didn’t plan on writing it.”
