Justin Timberlake Just Responded To Britney Spears' Instagram & It's 2000 All Over Again

It seems like Justin Timberlake is no longer crying a river over Britney Spears — look how friendly they are now! Justin Timberlake responded to Britney Spears' Instagram shoutout on Wednesday, April 15, as captured by the Comments by Celebs Instagram account. It's the virtual reunion that everyone has always needed and no one thought would ever happen.

While in self-quarantine, Spears posted a fun video of herself moving to her famous ex-boyfriend's 2018 song "Filthy" on Instagram. "This is my version of Snapchat or TikTok or whatever the cool thing you’re supposed to do these days,” she captioned the post. “As you can see I’m not really dancing folks… I’m just very bored." She then proceeded to praise Timberlake and even addressed their headline-making split. “PS I know we had one of the world’s biggest breakups 20 years ago… but hey the man is a genius!!!,” she wrote. “Great song JT!!!!!”

After the unexpected but amazing shout-out, the *NSYNC alum responded to the compliment with an approving “😂🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻”. Yes, he may not have written any actual words, but the saying "a picture says a thousand words" (or in this case, emojis) certainly applies here.

The former couple met as teenagers when they starred on the iconic Mickey Mouse Club and later dated for three years before breaking up in 2002, which was absolutely devastating for literally everyone who was alive at the time. Spears and Timberlake mostly kept quiet about each other publicly following their split, but the rumor mill certainly didn't.

It's been widely reported that Timberlake's breakout solo hit "Cry Me a River" was written about Spears — he even cast a Spears look-a-like for the music video. The singer has never confirmed this himself, but he did make it clear that the song is about a significant break-up in his 2018 book Hindsight. A couple of Spears' songs have also been rumored to be responses to "Cry Me a River," including her dreamy hit ballad "Everytime" and the mysterious, underrated gem "Mona Lisa." But, after some time, the wounds of their split faded.

In 2011, nearly a decade later, Timberlake finally opened up about Spears in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying that they hadn't spoken since their split. “We were two birds of the same feather—small-town kids, doing the same thing," he said. "Then you become adults, and the way you were as kids doesn’t make any sense." He continued, saying their whole life was pretty unreal at the time, and noted that, in the years since their split, he had become a completely different person. "I just don’t think we were normal; there was nothing normal about our existence," he said. "We spent way too much time being the biggest thing for teenyboppers.”

Now, almost another decade later, it's clear that there's no bad blood between the Prince and Princess of early 2000s Pop. And it's Timberlake's turn to film a dance video to one of Spears' latest hits.