Britney Spears said her post-Justin Timberlake breakup interview with Diane Sawyer was a “breaking point” for her.
The pop icon recalled in her new memoir, The Woman in Me, according to The New York Times, being “devastated” by their split, which he initiated over text message. She added that she even fantasized about quitting the entertainment industry.
Spears and the *NSYNC alum had dated for three years after initially getting together in 1999 following her tour with the boy band. Their relationship ended in 2002.
But following their split, Spears said what made it even more difficult was the media portraying her as a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” when in reality, “I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.”
She specifically recounts seeing Timberlake’s music video “Cry Me a River” for the first time, which she described as “a woman who looks like me cheats on him and he wanders around sad in the rain.”
As she was still trying to recover from the new heartbreak, the singer said her father, Jamie Spears, and his management team forced her to do an interview with Diane Sawyer, which ended up being a “breaking point” for her. Spears said Sawyer asked her what she did to the *NSYNC star that caused him “so much pain.”
The pop star wrote in her book that she left that interview feeling “like I had been exploited, set up in front of the whole world.”
At the time, there had been rumors that Spears kissed choreographer Wade Robson during her relationship with Timberlake. While she confirms the longtime rumor in her memoir, she also suggests that her actions were related to other rumors of Timberlake being unfaithful.
In excerpts released earlier this week by People magazine, Spears revealed that she had an abortion while she was in a relationship with Timberlake, saying it was “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
She explained that her decision to have the abortion was because he didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy. “Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” she alleges, according to People. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
“I don’t know if that was the right decision,” she added in her book. “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.”
Spears’ new memoir, which hits bookshelves on Oct. 24, discusses growing up in the music industry, her decades-long career, personal relationships and her 13-year conservatorship, which a Los Angeles County judge terminated in November 2021.
Though some have said the conservatorship saved Spears’s life, in excerpts released by The Times, the pop star wrote, “No, not really. My music was my life, and the conservatorship was deadly for that; it crushed my soul.”
As for how she feels about creating music now, Spears has no plans to return to the recording studio. “Pushing forward in my music career is not my focus at the moment,” Spears wrote. “It’s time for me not to be someone who other people want; it’s time to actually find myself.”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Timberlake’s rep for comment.