NSYNC’s Justin Timberlake says he was just as concerned as many of his fans last week by a false report that had him in a coma and his girlfriend Britney Spears dead after a car accident.
The two deejays who perpetrated the hoax have now been fired from their jobs at a Dallas radio station.
“I know the first thing I did was call Britney because I was, like, ‘Well maybe it got twisted, maybe something did happen to her,'” said Timberlake, 20, yesterday in Toronto while conducting interviews along with his fellow NSYNC bandmates.
“‘Cause she was in L.A. and I was in, I believe, Philadelphia the day it happened. So we were across the country from each other, and I immediately called her. The first thing she said to me was, ‘Hey, where are you?’
“We had both heard about it at the same time, and then she was, like, ‘I can’t believe this.’ By the time we actually talked about it, it had been all the way around the world.”
Still, Timberlake said he wasn’t angry at the deejay team, known as Kramer and Twitch.
“I feel sorry that they got fired,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone would make up something like that. That’s between them and their radio station. I’m not upset about it. I’m not pissed off towards anybody. I don’t have any animosity towards these deejays for doing it.
“It just sucks that my family was so worried about it. And Britney’s family too, ’cause they’re part of my family. I feel like I’ve grown up with them too.
“When the people that you really love and care about are upset and calling you… I got six phone calls from different people in my family, immediately.”
Timberlake added that the hoax took the press coverage surrounding him and Spears, who met years ago when they were both young performers at the Mickey Mouse Club, to a new low.
Ever since word got out that he and Spears were in a relationship, he said, untrue things have been said, and they deal with that. “But this just took it to a whole other planet, a whole other solar system. And there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“But it just sucks that my family has to go through stuff like that. I don’t want them to have to worry about me. What if that were really to happen to me?”
NSYNC, who performed a show in front of 40,000 fans at SkyDome on Tuesday night, stuck around yesterday to talk to the press about their upcoming album, Celebrity, which is in stores July 24 – The Sun was one of two newspapers in Canada granted interviews. NSYNC also made an hour-long appearance at MuchMusic.
Hundreds of fans turned out at Queen and John where a special platform had been set up in the middle of the street for the band to mingle with the crowd.