Justin Timberlake is reeling from the release of footage from his 2024 DWI arrest.
The 19-minute video shows the “Suit & Tie” singer, 45, being put through a series of sobriety tests after being pulled over by Sag Harbor Village Police on the night of Tuesday, June 18, for driving through a stop sign.
“I’m a little nervous,” a “glassy-eyed and slurring” Timberlake says, per the New York Times. “By the way these are, like, really hard tests.”
After he’s handcuffed and put in the patrol car, a friend of the former boybander pleads to speak with him.
“Can you guys please just do me a favor because you love ‘Bye Bye Bye’ or ‘SexyBack’?” the woman asks before requesting that Timberlake be given his cell phone.
“Justin knew the footage would go viral, which is why he fought so hard to have it sealed,” a source tells Star. “So the fact he couldn’t pull that off is soul crushing.”
It’s also “utterly humiliating,” adds the source.
“He’s totally consumed by what he says is the injustice of it all, saying he was persecuted and singled out for being famous,” shares the source, “which is laughable as the cops didn’t even know who he was at first!”
Sag Harbor PD/MEGA
Wife Jessica Biel is “sympathetic to a degree,” the source reveals. “But she only has so much bandwidth for his moaning and griping.”
The “Cry Me a River” singer, who ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge of driving while ability impaired, “heaps all his frustrations and anxieties on everyone around him,” says the source, “and of course, Jessica’s the one who suffers most in all this because she has to be around Justin and his horrible moods.”
As Starpreviously reported, the 44-year-old actress — who shares two sons with Timberlake — has had to put up with a lot in recent years, between his 2019 PDA scandal with Palmer costar Alisha Wainwright and his DWI arrest.
“Jessica does still love him. She hates the thought of breaking up their family and the logistics of a divorce would be traumatizing,” says the source. “But when he’s acting like this, it makes it harder than ever for her to argue with the many folks in their world who don’t understand why she’s not had the courage to walk away.”