Cry Me A River (Justin Timberlake Song) - Music Video - Development and Synopsis

Development and Synopsis

The music video for "Cry Me a River" was directed by Francis Lawrence in Malibu, California, during the week of October 29, 2002. The concept of the video was by Lawrence, who in an interview with MTV News revealed, " had a conversation on the phone and all he said was he wanted to have some dancing in it, but to do my thing. He told me what the song was about, but in a as well. He just said it was a kiss-off song, and so I came up with this idea and he went for it". Lawrence added that he also included some details in the video which Timberlake enjoyed, such as a reference to Spears's tattoo. He explained that he and Timberlake did not mention specific names in the process of creating the video and just talked about "the general beats of the piece". Lawrence also revealed that executives of Jive Records were nervous about some actions in the video, such as Timberlake portraying a voyeur and the tone of some scenes he was portraying with a girl. "That's the thing I liked most about this project, was that he was coming into it with a super clean-cut image with 'N Sync, and he's such a nice guy and so handsome, and what I was into doing was making him be a bit scary. Lurking around the house in the rain, throwing a rock through her window, being a peeping Tom, getting revenge and doing stuff that's not really what a nice guy does." The music video for "Cry Me a River" was released onto the iTunes Store on April 28, 2003.

The video begins with a blonde woman, played by model and actress Lauren Hastings (allegedly portraying Britney Spears), walking out of her house hand-in-hand with an unidentified man. The couple leaves in the woman's car as Timberlake rolls down the window of a silver Porsche, from which he and his friend have been watching the woman. Timberlake breaks into the house by throwing a rock through a window and proceeds to walk through the woman's house, with anti-gravity jumps and slides, not causing any other visible damage, except for kicking a picture frame of the woman across the living room. Then, he searches some drawers and finds a video camera, while the driver of the car, revealed to be Timbaland, signals for his female accomplice, played by model Kiana Bessa, who is sitting in the back, to go in. She enters the house and goes with Timberlake to the blonde woman's bedroom, when she starts to undress and kiss him while being filmed. They stay in the bedroom for a moment, as the accomplice exits the house and Timberlake stays. As the blonde woman returns, he follows her around the house, then hides in a closet as she takes a shower. He gets closer to her and eventually touches the glass surrounding the shower. The blonde woman senses someone else in the room and turns around, but Timberlake is gone. She leaves the bathroom and goes into her bedroom, where the video made by him and his new lover is playing on the television as the music video ends.