The face you make when your tour is not, in fact, ruined.
Photo: JC Olivera/Billboard via Getty Images
Just when you finally forgot about the time Justin Timberlake ran a stop sign in Sag Harbor and got a DWI, for which he took a plea deal and got the charge lowered to a traffic violation so that hopefully we all would forget this whole thing, Timberlake’s allegedly “tour-ruining” event has come roaring back. Despite Timberlake’s attempts to block the release of police body-cam footage from that night, believing it would cause “irreparable harm,” the video of Timberlake’s arrest on June 18, 2024, was made public on March 20, opening the singer up to a new round of scrutiny and ridicule.
Prior to the release of the body-cam footage, memes had been swirling of a rumored interaction during Timberlake’s arrest in which the singer allegedly told the officer that the DWI would “ruin the tour.” The footage paints a slightly different picture; instead, the cop asks Timberlake if he’s visiting, to which the singer responds, “Yeah, I’m on tour.” “What are you doing?” the officer asks. “I’m on a world tour,” Timberlake clarifies. Then he clarifies further: “Hard to explain. Uhh … umm … a world tour … I’m Justin Timberlake?”
Obviously “This is going to ruin the tour” would have been an all-timer if true, but what the body-cam footage later proves, if anything, is that Timberlake did have jokes during this time of stress. During one of his sobriety tests, he cracks that they are, “like, really hard tests,” and later at the police station, he pretends to balk at being labeled “white.” Now, is a DWI a laughing matter? Not really — especially when Timberlake had the ways and means not to be driving under the influence. But at least he can now maybe rid himself of the meme that’s come to haunt him.
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