As soon as one gets past the initial shock of Wade Robson’s vomit-inducing confessions in Leaving Neverland, they suddenly seem to remember that Robson himself was an accused party in the early 00s: of breaking up pop music’s perfect Aryan couple: Britney and Justin. And, with the tide increasingly turning against him in terms of both not automatically painting a woman as the whore in a cheating scenario and with legions of Michael Jackson fans, supporters and family members quick to discredit him in any way they can, this little tidbit is cropping up all over again. Much to the salt in barely closed wound of Timberlake, who now must add to the list of wrongs Robson has done to him to include dismantling the legend of the very pop icon he modeled himself after and his been compared to from the outset of his solo career.
In fact, Timberlake has specifically stated that his decision to go solo was essentially Jackson’s doing after the latter rejected the song “Gone,” which then fell into *NSYNC’s lap. Subsequently, “[Michael] called me on the phone and said that he wanted to cut the record, but he wanted it to be a duet between himself and I. And I said, ‘Well …we’ve already cut the song as an *NSYNC record. Could we do, like, *NSYNC featuring Michael Jackson’, or ‘Michael Jackson featuring *NSYNC?’ And he was very absolute about the fact that he wanted it to be a duet between himself and I.”
A master manipulator in strange and unfathomable ways, Jackson may have, believe it or not, actually been using Justin as a means to get closer to Britney, who hadn’t yet freshly broken his heart in time to give him the inspiration for one of Justified‘s lead singles, “Cry Me A River.” For as Robson was wont to point out in the documentary, “Michael had some sort of obsession with Britney. He would call me and he would want to know what it was like working with her and what she was like. ‘Isn’t she sexy, isn’t she beautiful?’…wondering if I could set up a way for them to meet.” That “obsession” likely stemmed from the aforementioned vocabulary word used to describe both Britney and Justin: Aryan. For Jackson was inescapably covetous of what it would mean to have white skin, which likely wasn’t helped by his rare collection of Nazi videos.
Apparently Wade wasn’t as obliging as Justin in terms of arranging an introduction (despite having constant access to her–not a sexual innuendo–while choreographing 2001’s Dream Within A Dream tour). Thus inciting Jackson to make contact with Timberlake and tantalize him with the aforementioned flattery. That call established a strong enough connection for Jackson to appear with *NSYNC at the MTV VMAs in September of 2001, where he shows up at the end of their performance of “Pop” to bust out his usual choreography, looking more than somewhat relieved that none of his bones popped out by the end.
In the crowd, cheering and applauding, we see Britney Spears (and also her lookalike, Jessica Simpson). Jackson’s goal, as usual, was attained. To add to and intensify it–that rapport he wanted to establish with Spears–the following night, September 7th, a concert special called Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration aired on CBS from Madison Square Garden, during which Jackson and Spears performed “The Way You Make Me Feel” as a duet.
The admiration that both Spears and Timberlake would express for Jackson over the years likely could not have made it much easier for Robson to confess his secret about being abused by Jackson, what with these two entities once serving as his biggest clients in the entertainment industry. However, the mutual silence of both Spears and Timberlake on the subject of Leaving Neverland seems to speak volumes about where their allegiances lie. Forever with Jackson, not the once successful choreographer now billed as having torn them apart despite the fact that, in the early 00s, the fault of the breakup was placed squarely on Spears’ shoulders as Timberlake proceeded to allude to her as a slut and debunk the myth of her virginity. Likely a phenomenon that Jackson, in all his contempt for women, was on board with as he watched the interviews from the perch of his home theater, where Hitler also touted the pure race of someone like Spears.
Robson, meanwhile, is probably lucky that Timberlake is too vanilla to perform voodoo for once “stealing” the love of his life…and then ruining the idol that informed his career.
