Justin Timberlake has taken time to “clear the air” and apologise about the video featuring homeless people that was produced by a friend of his, ostensibly in honour of his recent wedding to Jessica Biel.
Timberlake and Biel — who’ll now go by Jessica Timberlake in real life, if not professionally, she says — invited only about 100 people to their lavish, fireworks-punctuated nuptials in southern Italy. Singer-actor-businessman Timberlake posted an open letter on his website on Friday explaining his take on the video, which opened with a title card reading “Greetings From Your Hollywood Friends Who Just Couldn’t Make It.” It went downhill from there, as the “friends” offering their congratulations turned out to be people who appeared to be homeless or otherwise distressed on the streets of Los Angeles. One man who said he was paid $40 to say some pre-written lines told TMZ he wasn’t informed exactly which “Justin and Jessica” he was addressing. Gawker, which posted an excerpt of the video earlier this week, earned a couple of sternly worded legal letters from counsel representing the man behind the video — letters strong enough to get the site to take down the allegedly stolen clip, albeit not before it escaped to other destinations online.
So, here’s what Timberlake would like to make clear about this “silly, unsavoury video that was made as a joke and not in any way in mockery”: He didn’t know anything about its production or existence he says. His friends are good people. The video was not shown at his wedding. And he thinks we can all agree it was “distasteful, even though that was not it’s [sic] intention.”
All that coming after he went on at length about how it’s not his normal M.O. “to comment on things that so often go misunderstood or something that has even shed any kind of dark light on what was and will always be one of the most special weeks of my life.” But this time was different.
“I want to say that, on behalf of my friends, family, and associative knuckleheads, I am deeply sorry to anyone who was offended by the video. Again, it was something that I was not made aware of. But, I do understand the reaction and, by association, I am holding myself accountable.”
