What did Justin Timberlake say to Megan Thee Stallion backstage at last night’s Video Music Awards? One of MTV’s backstage feeds caught what looked like an argument between the two before Megan’s performance with Cardi B. She’s got a hairstylist doing final touch ups and he leans over and says something that she has an immediate reaction to. 

 

Something she shakes her finger at.  

We can’t hear what they’re saying, though. Where are the lip readers?! Obviously Justin doesn’t have the best track record with respect to Black woman (or women in general… let’s be honest) and his general ick has been well documented on this site. But did this man really fix his mouth to say something other than “good luck”? 

 

Everyone knows Megan’s had a rough few years, to put it extremely simply. It takes some kind of audacity (a straight white man’s audacity?) to think what you have to say is important enough to interrupt a woman preparing for a big live performance. And when the response from Megan wasn’t fangirling, he retreated with his tail between his legs. 

You’re probably wondering what Justin was doing at the VMAs, considering he’s in his flop era. Well, he was reuniting with *NSYNC, because when your music stops selling you no longer have an excuse to say no to reunion requests from the boys. On the backstage cam you can see Joey Fatone looks like he’s trying to smooth things over with Megan when he should have been checking his friend’s behaviour. The band presented Best Pop video to Taylor Swift, who asked the question we were all wondering: “Like, are you doing something? What’s going to happen now?”

 

Within an hour of the Meg/JT clip hitting Twitter, ET published their what really happened piece with sources saying Justin told Megan, “It’s so nice to meet you,” and Megan replied, “No no this don't count, this don't count, we gotta meet proper." 

But... who are these sources? If you watch the video back again, it does actually look like she could be saying those words but it could also just be really great spin. And what’s more telling is that even if it was a friendly interaction, and not the beef that everyone thought it was initially, what does it say about JT that so many people were willing to believe that he did something to offend Meg – THAT’s the bigger issue he’ll have to address as he tries to make himself relevant again.