The Bachelor

A week later, he travels to Manhattan to promote Justified on MTV, where his "Cry Me a River" video is already Number One on TRL. Timberlake steadfastly, and somewhat illogically, denies the video has anything to do with him and Spears. "I didn't make this video so I could sit around and talk about it," he says belligerently. "It's a video, and when you watch it, either you have a sense of humor or you don't. [The girl] doesn't represent anybody. She represents a female in the story line. I haven't gone public about my relationship."

He does say, however, that he's called Spears since the video's debut, "because when people blew it way out of proportion, I didn't want things to get misunderstood. She was cool. We're cool. I haven't spoken to her directly about it, because that's my career, and I don't speak with people in my personal life about my career, but I can tell you that we are cool. There's no hard feelings. What is all the fuss about? If anybody is the bad guy in the video, it's me.''

And that's certainly true. If the Britney figure is a cheater, the Timberlake character is both a cheater and a creep. To exact his revenge, he breaks into his girlfriend's house, gets it on with some tramp on his girlfriend's bed, films it with his girlfriend's video camera, arranges it so his girlfriend will see the video and, upon his girlfriend's return from her own tryst, stalks her through the house and into the shower. It's weird, all right, and speaks of a guy with a mother-size hole in his heart who wants to get even and then some.

"What can I say?'' Timberlake continues. "It's a good-ass video. I don't want anyone to come off smelling like roses. I don't like the smell of roses anyway.''

[From Issue 914 — January 23, 2003]