Britney Spears was in the middle of filming one of her biggest music videos when she received shocking news from Justin Timberlake, and the video’s director just revealed how she responded.
The pop stars’ notorious romance has long been considered one of the biggest celebrity relationships of the early 2000s, and then it came to an abrupt end in 2002. Now, in a podcast interview that came out last week, the music video director Chris Applebaum is sharing new details about the moment Britney learned that Justin was ending their relationship, revealing that the breakup happened while she was on set, and how a solid pep talk turned the project around. Read more about the shocking moment and how the singer handled it below.
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Music Video Director Recalls The Moment Justin Timberlake Broke Up With Britney Spears In New Interview
It seems safe to say Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were once one of the most famous young couples in pop music.
The two first met as children on the Mickey Mouse Club before reconnecting years later and beginning a relationship in the late 1990s. Their romance lasted for several years before they split in 2002, which made headlines for years and still does. Their breakup has remained a major part of their respective pop culture histories, and came back up a few years ago when she opened up about the split in her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me.
Now, more than two decades after they split, music video director Chris Applebaum revealed what happened behind the scenes when she received the text message Justin sent about wanting to split. The director was working with the singer on the "Overprotected" Darkchild Remix video in 2002, and he recalled realizing something was wrong when Spears suddenly disappeared from the set during the lengthy shoot.
"We were doing that last rain sequence," he recalled on the "Hyperfixated with Joseph Shepherd" podcast on Wednesday, August 5th. "We were waiting, and we were all set up, and I didn't know where [Britney] was. And everyone's like, 'We've been asking. We've been knocking on the door. She's not coming out.' Time passed, and I'm like, 'How are we going to get this done?'"
Later, he went over to the mom-of-two's trailer, where, on the way, the choreographer warned him it was a "bad situation," where she was with a few members of her team.
"And everyone's solemn and...they have iron curtain eyes," he continued. "They're really dark." Then, he was shown the text message from Justin about how he wanted to "end the relationship."
Chris Recalls The 'Light Bulb' Moment That Changed Britney's Performance
As the "Party In The U.S.A" director was leaving the Grammy-winner's trailer, he noticed she had animal crackers with her, which ended up being a small detail that somehow inspired him to encourage her to turn the heartbreak into motivation.
"You could get back out there and do a performance that's so hot that you show him that he just lost - he just messed up the best thing he's ever had," he remembered telling her. "She was like, 'That's it! You're right! Let's do that.' And she came out, and that's why that performance was so cool."
Britney returned to the set and filmed the performance during the bridge of "Overprotected," with Applebaum later crediting the emotional moment for helping make the sequence so memorable. He also remembered showing the finished footage to the shoot's choreographer, Brian Friedman, who became emotional while watching it. The choreography led to Friedman winning a Best Choreography nomination at the MTV Video Music Awards, making the difficult moment on set part of the story behind one of her most memorable performances.
