Britney Spears Just Joked About Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me a River’ Video

Britney Spears may have just thrown some subtle shade at her ex, Justin Timberlake. 

In a new video Spears posted on Instagram, the pop queen joked about her ex-boyfriend’s 2003 music video for “Cry Me a River.” For context: After their 2002 breakup, Timberlake released the “Cry Me a River” video, which features a Spears lookalike cheating on him. (The model in the video wears several early-2000s Britney style staples: bootleg jeans, a blazer with flared sleeves, a newsboy cap, etc. The lookalike even has a similar haircut to Spears’s at the time.). This narrative of “Britney cheated!” dominated the tabloids, and soon Spears was made to be the villain of their split. 

But Spears is having the last laugh. In February 2021, Timberlake publicly apologized for his involvement in Spears’s character assassination in the 2000s. And in Brit’s new Instagram video, she tries on several different looks, including one reminiscent of the lookalike in “Cry Me a River.” She couldn’t help but make a little joke in the caption: “Thoughts while making this video 🤔 … Hmmmm something looks familiar …. The hat 👒 …. wait I look 👀 like that girl in the Justin Timberlake video with that hat in Cry Me A River !!! Oh shit that’s ME !!! I’m Britney Spears ⭐️ ???” 

Timberlake apologizing to Spears came on the heels of backlash he received after the release of the documentary Framing Britney Spears. A portion of the doc reexamined Spears’s relationship with Timberlake. “The way that people treated her, to be very high school about it, was like she was the school slut and he was the quarterback,” New York Times critic Wesley Morris says in the film. 

“I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually,” Timberlake wrote on Instagram. “Because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”