The DJ and reality TV star, 47, told Entertainment Tonight<\/a> on Tuesday, Oct. 14 that Spears, 43, called Timberlake, from whom she\u2019d split two years earlier, just before they said \u201cI do\u201d in September 2004 in order to leave that chapter of her life behind her.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018What\u2019s wrong?\u2019 I thought she was talking to her mom on the phone or something, and maybe she was having doubts,\u201d Federline recalled. \u201cAnd she told me she was on the phone with Justin.\u201d<\/p>\n Federline said asked whether he\u2019d heard his fianc\u00e9e correctly, while reassuring her that there was no pressure to tie the knot if she was having doubts.<\/p>\n \u201cI just kind of stepped back like, \u2018Did I just hear you right? What the hell is going on\u2019? And I immediately was, \u2018Okay, we don\u2019t have to do this.\u2019 I didn\u2019t care if we got married or not,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd she told me no and really was like, \u2018I just wanted to make sure that everything is done. I want to make sure that I say my final piece.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Damn. On the night before our wedding, this is what you decide to do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Reps for Spears and Timberlake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Federline said he \u201ctook it with a grain of salt\u201d at the time, and rationalized her explanation by telling himself that she was likely \u201cclosing a chapter of her life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was super young. I was so madly in love at that moment,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine what it was like to be her, I couldn\u2019t imagine what it was like to be Justin in those moments, because they were super young. You\u2019re talking teenagers that had to go through this globally, and I know that they really cared about each other back then.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that he felt as though Spears was \u201cnot over\u201d her relationship with Timberlake at the time.<\/p>\n Spears and Timberlake, 44, dated from 1999 to 2002. In her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, the \u201cToxic\u201d singer revealed that she became pregnant with Timberlake\u2019s baby while they were together, but had an abortion<\/a>. 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\u2019t want to be a father.”<\/p>\n Dave Hogan\/Getty<\/p>\n Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.<\/p>\n In 2021, the \u201cCan\u2019t Stop the Feeling\u201d singer publicly apologized to Spears for his behavior surrounding their breakup, which included the song \u201cCry Me a River,\u201d a music video that painted Spears in a bad light, and public comments about their sex life. Spears later supported his song \u201cSelfish\u201d in an Instagram post in 2024.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s \u201csituation,\u201d which he believes is \u201cracing toward something irreversible.\u201d<\/a> The former couple were married from 2004 to 2007, and share sons Sean Preston, 20, and Jayden James, 19.<\/p>\n Dimitrios Kambouris\/WireImag; John Salangsang\/Shutterstock for W Hotels <\/p>\n Britney Spears; Kevin Federline<\/p>\n![\"Dave](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/6a9bc71307ade5607f3ed917e38524b4.jpeg\"\/)
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