By Page Six | Created at 2026-08-06 14:59:11 | Updated at 2026-08-06 16:48:09
4 hours ago
She’s stronger than yesterday.
Chris Applebaum described 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 toward the end of the second day. We were in, like, hour 20 or something like that,” the music video director recalled on the “Hyperfixated with Joseph Shepherd” podcast Wednesday.
“We were doing that last rain sequence,” Applebaum, 56, shared. “We were waiting and we were all set up and I didn’t know where [Spears] was.
“And everyone’s like, ‘We’ve been asking. We’ve been knocking on the door. She’s not coming out,'” he continued. “Time passed and I’m like, ‘How are we going to get this done?'”
Applebaum remembered, “Finally, I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go and f–king get Britney myself out of the trailer.'”
On his way, the “Party in the U.S.A.” video director ran into Spears’ choreographer, Brian Friedman, who urged him to “get away” from the “bad situation.”
Applebaum added, “I walked in and Britney was there. And I was like, ‘Is everything OK?’ And everyone’s solemn and … they have iron curtain eyes. They’re really dark.”
When he asked what happened, the “Gimme More” hitmaker 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 shoot — but as he turned to leave the trailer, he saw the Grammy winner’s animal crackers and that “inspired” him.
“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 he’s ever had,” he told the pop star.
“She … was like, ‘That’s it! You’re right! Let’s do that,'” Applebaum said of the “lightbulb” moment. “And she came out and that’s why that performance was so cool.”
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 “Toxic” songstress claimed the *NSYNC singer dumped her with a two-word text: “It’s over.”
Spears and Timberlake dated from 1999 to 2002.
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