Britney Spears’ music video director details moment singer received Justin Timberlake breakup text on set
She’s stronger than yesterday.
Chris Applebaum detailed the moment Britney Spears received a breakup text from Justin Timberlake while on the set of her 2002 music video for the Darkchild remix of “Overprotected.”
“It was towards the end of the second day. We were like hour 20 or something like that,” the music video director recalled on the “Hyperfixated with Joseph Shepherd” podcast Wednesday.
“And we were doing that last rain sequence like, ‘I don’t need nobody telling me just what I want.’ We were waiting and we were all set up and I didn’t know where [Spears] was,” Applebaum, 56, shared.
“And everyone’s like, ‘We’ve been asking. We’ve been knocking on the door. She’s not coming out.’ And time passed and I’m like, ‘How are we going to get this done?’”
Applebaum said they were shooting the music video in an alleyway in downtown Los Angeles and “angry” residents would throw canned goods onto the set.
To try to ease the tension, Applebaum said he would have his producer give $100 bills to the residents so they would stop throwing things.
“And we had gotten through all of that ’cause we’re also like, ‘We can’t bring Britney out like while we’re doing this. She’s going to freak out.’ So, we finally got that all stabilized. And we’re just waiting and I’m looking at my watch and I’m like, ‘We got to go,’” he recalled.
“So finally, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to go and f–king get Britney myself out of the trailer,’” Applebaum said.
On the way to the trailer, the “Party in the U.S.A.” video director said he ran into Spears’ choreographer, Brian Friedman, who urged him to “get away” and said it was a “bad situation.”
“So, I walked in and Britney was there. And I was like, ‘Is everything okay?’ And everyone’s solemn and … they have iron curtain eyes. They’re really dark,” Applebaum remembered.
When he asked what happened, the “Gimme More” singer showed him her flip phone with a text from her “boyfriend” for them to “end the relationship.”
Applebaum said he told Spears, 44, he understood if she wanted to end the music video shoot. As he turned to leave the trailer, he saw the Grammy winner’s animal crackers and that “inspired” him to encourage the pop star to stick it out.
“The other thing you could do … 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 that he’s ever had,” Applebaum said.
“And she just like ‘light bulb’ and 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,” he added.
In Spears’ 2023 memoir, “The Woman in Me,” she confirmed long-standing rumors that Timberlake, now 45, ended their three-year romance via text message.
The *NSYNC singer dumped the “Toxic” songstress with a two-word text: “It’s over.”
Spears and Timberlake dated from 1999 to 2002.
