Variety had the exclusive yesterday - a four-part “tell-all” docuseries about Justin Timberlake is coming to Apple TV in December and apparently Janet Jackson will be part of it and also he supposedly talks about Britney Spears. There is only one person that this project will serve, and it’s the person who has always made it about himself, which is why for years I’ve referred to him as “Me Me Me, JT!”

In his defence… I guess… he needs it. That’s probably the only satisfying part of this news. Justin, once one of the biggest names in pop, has been in a decade-long slump. The last high-point of his career, if you can call it that, was Trolls in 2016. Then, in 2018, he released his album Man of the Woods to mixed-at-best reviews; not a single track from that album made much noise, especially when you consider the music that came out that year: Kacey Musgraves’s Golden Hour, Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy, Travis Scott’s Astroworld, and Ariana Grande’s Sweetener – all of them with lasting power, all of them with major pop culture impact.

The Man of the Woods album cycle came and went… and then, a year later in November 2019, a drunk Justin was papped with a colleague at a bar in New Orleans while he was shooting Palmer. They were holding hands, they looked very much more than friends. And a few weeks later he had to apologise publicly to his wife on Instagram (which he has since deleted).

Palmer came out in January 2021. You know what happened basically a week later? The New York Times documentary, Framing Britney Spears, was released which skyrocketed the #FreeBritney movement into the mainstream. The conversation about Britney’s conservatorship, relitigating the media’s treatment of her through the #MeToo lens, after a social media reckoning about online behaviour 2000s (in which I shamefully participated), not only completely overshadowed any interest in Palmer, but also put Justin’s role in the widespread mockery of Britney back in the spotlight – on top of what happened with Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl and how he basically skated out of that scandal unscathed while her career was permanently derailed.

So, three weeks after his movie came out, when he expected to be talking about his performance and the film, he had to issue yet another apology, which has also since been deleted. That was February 2021.

In October 2023, after she’s released from the conservatorship, Britney’s book The Woman in Me, is the big entertainment story of the season. The memoir includes all kinds of information about her relationship with Justin – and most of it is unflattering. She specifically called him out for villainising her post-breakup, and fueling the narrative that she was a cheater who deserved the public shaming. The audiobook was narrated by Michelle Williams, who delivered an Oscar-worthy reading of this anecdote that went mega viral … and is always worth the listen:

 

Fo-shiz fo-shiz and Justin Timberlake are now inextricable – explosively and virally inextricable and this happened six months before the release of his 2024 album, Everything I Thought…something something, I can’t remember, because no one remembers, because that album might have flopped even harder than Man of the Woods.

JT dropped Everything I Thought on March 15, 2024. Two weeks later, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter wiped it off the planet. His album was culturally and commercially insignificant, though he did go on tour and his fans did buy tickets, mostly to listen to his old tracks, but then… in June 2024, Justin was arrested for drunk driving in the Hamptons, a scandal that gave us another catchphrase to go along with “fo-shiz fo-shiz”:

“This is going to ruin the tour.”

It doesn’t even matter anymore that he probably never said those exact words when he was pulled over by an officer who didn’t even know who the f-ck he was. All that matters is that that sentence showed up in the reports following the arrest and has now become permanently associated with him, to the point where people are leaving it in the comment sections below yesterday’s story about the docuseries.

Fo-shiz fo-shiz and “this is going to ruin the tour” are the lyrics to Justin’s decade of flopitude. And that’s why he needs this comeback, in the form of a “tell-all” that they are assuming the public is asking for?

As usual though, the reason for the interest is not JT himself but the mention of Janet and Britney who, in one way or another, will be part of the show. So is he ever beating the allegations that he benefits from superstar women?

Janet will have her own reasons for appearing in this docuseries. She is entitled to whatever closure she needs… but if there’s any hint of her pulling up to help absolve him, I’m not sure that’s going to go over great with fans (like me) who don’t f-ck with him. It is possible, though, that the scene involving Janet will be Justin apologising to her on camera, acknowledging his privilege and discussing the misogynoir that he benefited from when she was vilified after the Super Bowl and he went on to even more success.

But, again, that would, in the end, be in service of rescuing his reputation and turning around his career.

And the same goes, of course, for Britney. What is the public’s appetite for listening to him using this platform to debate her feelings and her experiences, if that indeed is what he ends up doing? Actually there is a segment of the public that might be hungry for that take: the manosphere. He wouldn’t be the first celebrity to engage with that kind of support.

To be clear, this all speculative. What is not up for debate is Justin Timberlake’s motivation – he needs a reset, he’s mounting a comeback. How he goes about it remains to be seen in this docuseries but it is also interesting who he’s working with: Fisher Stevens. Fisher directed JT in Palmer and in the unscripted space, you’ll know Fisher’s work from, more recently, the Beckham Netflix docuseries which was both highly watched and critically acclaimed, acclaimed as in Emmy-winning.

Fisher’s portrait of David Beckham was a reclamation, a vindication after decades of false narratives about his athletic contributions and decisions, in addition to all the cheating allegations. Needless to say, JT is hoping for the same. He wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t going to be a sympathetic telling of his story. No doubt JT’s fans are already sympathetic to his, um, plight. And they’re banking on a wider audience being willing to extend him the same grace.

That, for me, is the big takeaway for now. Once upon a time, there is no way Justin would have humbled himself to ask for grace. Back in 2018 he scoffed at the idea of a Vegas residency and now he’s rumoured to be mounting one, perhaps building on whatever goodwill he’s able to generate from this docuseries. Justin Timberlake is out here begging to be relevant again, trying everything he can before he has to pull the trigger on his last resort: an *NSYNC reunion. 

We are Squawking JT today - please join us! (App link here.)

Photo credits: David Fisher/Shutterstock

Share this post