NEED TO KNOW
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Kevin Federline claims Britney Spears called Justin Timberlake the night before their wedding in 2004
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He claims that she “wanted to make sure that everything is done” between them
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Federline is set to release his memoir You Thought You Knew on Oct. 21
Britney Spears allegedly gave her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake a ring the night before she married Kevin Federline, Federline claims in a new interview.
The DJ and reality TV star, 47, told Entertainment Tonight on Tuesday, Oct. 14 that Spears, 43, called Timberlake, from whom she’d split two years earlier, just before they said “I do” in September 2004 in order to leave that chapter of her life behind her.
“I was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ I thought she was talking to her mom on the phone or something, and maybe she was having doubts,” Federline recalled. “And she told me she was on the phone with Justin.”
Federline said asked whether he’d heard his fiancée correctly, while reassuring her that there was no pressure to tie the knot if she was having doubts.
“I just kind of stepped back like, ‘Did I just hear you right? What the hell is going on’? And I immediately was, ‘Okay, we don’t have to do this.’ I didn’t care if we got married or not,” he said. “And she told me no and really was like, ‘I just wanted to make sure that everything is done. I want to make sure that I say my final piece.’ I’m like, ‘Damn. On the night before our wedding, this is what you decide to do?’”
Reps for Spears and Timberlake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Federline said he “took it with a grain of salt” at the time, and rationalized her explanation by telling himself that she was likely “closing a chapter of her life.”
“I was super young. I was so madly in love at that moment,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be her, I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be Justin in those moments, because they were super young. You’re talking teenagers that had to go through this globally, and I know that they really cared about each other back then.”
He added that he felt as though Spears was “not over” her relationship with Timberlake at the time.
Spears and Timberlake, 44, dated from 1999 to 2002. In her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, the “Toxic” singer revealed that she became pregnant with Timberlake’s baby while they were together, but had an abortion. She writes in the 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.”
Dave Hogan/Getty
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.
In 2021, the “Can’t Stop the Feeling” singer publicly apologized to Spears for his behavior surrounding their breakup, which included the song “Cry Me a River,” a music video that painted Spears in a bad light, and public comments about their sex life. Spears later supported his song “Selfish” in an Instagram post in 2024.
Federline is set to release his memoir You Thought You Knew on Oct. 21, and an excerpt published in The New York Times revealed that he wrote he is worried about his ex-wife’s “situation,” which he believes is “racing toward something irreversible.” The former couple were married from 2004 to 2007, and share sons Sean Preston, 20, and Jayden James, 19.
Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImag; John Salangsang/Shutterstock for W Hotels
Britney Spears; Kevin Federline
A representative for Spears spoke out in a statement ahead of the memoir’s release.
“With news from Kevin’s book breaking, once again he and others are profiting off her and sadly it comes after child support has ended with Kevin,” the statement reads. “All she cares about are her kids, Sean Preston and Jayden James and their well-being during this sensationalism. She detailed her journey in her memoir.”
In his interview with ET, Federline said money was not the reason for writing the memoir, but rather, it was for his children (He is a dad to four other kids in addition to his sons with Spears).
“I’m doing this now [because] I wanted to make sure that my children were old enough to understand what I’m doing,” he said. “Everything has always been about my family. And that’s what people don’t really realize, is that every step that I’ve taken has been for the benefit of my children. And my children are ready for me to tell my story.”
Read the original article on People
