Justin Timberlake’s Air of Desperation
As a musical guest on SNL, the star’s changed status in the pop-cultural universe was hard to ignore.
Once upon a time, having Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night Live would have been a thrilling thing. In the mid-2000s, the pop star emerged as one of the show’s favorite recurring hosts, the kind of mega-famous celeb who seemed like he would be down for anything, such as dressing up in a giant mascot costume or putting his, ahem, dick in a box.
But the tide has turned on Timberlake. He arrived on SNL this weekend as a musical guest with an air of desperation. In the midst of trying to reboot his pop-music career after 2018’s poorly received album Man of the Woods, his persona has also undergone a cultural reckoning, especially in light of the revelations about him found in his ex Britney Spears’s memoir, among them that she got an abortion because he “wasn’t happy about the pregnancy.” She wrote that Timberlake tried to serenade her with his guitar while she was in pain, and then went on to paint her as “a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy” after they broke up. Between that and a reevaluation of his role in the Janet Jackson Super Bowl scandal of 2004, in which he got off relatively scot-free while Jackson was pilloried, Timberlake has become emblematic of a casual mid-2000s white-male cockiness that doesn’t play as well in 2024.
Timberlake, however, seemed to want to use SNL as a way to ease back into the public’s good graces, promoting his new album, Everything I Thought It Was. And yet when he popped out on stage during the host Dakota Johnson’s monologue, he brought less confidence and more eagerness to remind audiences why they used to love him. Johnson cheekily told her former co-star from The Social Network that he was just the musical guest. “Well, if you want me to be in sketches,” he began to a round of cheers, “I have hosted before.” He then mouthed the words five times. “Yeah, well that was 10 years ago,” Johnson responded in a line that made clear that the writers were aware of how retrograde Timberlake now seems.
Johnson continued that she was so happy he chose her show for his “comeback,” a word that seemed to rankle Timberlake. “Is that what we’re calling it?” he asked, before launching into a lewd joke using another meaning of the word come.
The actual host of the night, Johnson, turned out to be a good foil for Timberlake. Johnson’s natural deadpan, which has made her a viral sensation, helped her play cool girl to Timberlake’s jittery wannabe during the monologue. Her casual dismissal of him only further highlighted Timberlake’s awkwardness. Meanwhile, the best sketches featured Johnson’s dry delivery.
In “Big Dumb Cups,” a parody of the baffling Stanley Cup trend, she let her own monotone slide into that of an influencer who was, as she said, “physically or at least spiritually blonde.” Along with Chloe Fineman and Heidi Gardner, Johnson effortlessly doled out jokes about the absurdity of the jugs with a light vocal fry. Holding her Stanley near her face, she poured in a bottle of Josh wine, a cheap brand that has also become a meme. “Get in there Josh,” she said.
Johnson’s humor carries with it an amusing sourness—she’s the queen bee you wouldn’t want to cross. That was on full display during the Please Don’t Destroy video in which she expertly dissed the comedy group’s three members. While they attempted to rib her back, Johnson always came out on top, describing them as the “lonelier island,” a reference to Timberlake’s frequent collaborators, Andy Samberg’s comedy trio The Lonely Island.
Still, Johnson’s power also comes from her self-awareness. When she unleashed nepo-baby charges against Please Don’t Destroy’s John Higgins and Martin Herlihy, both of whose parents have worked on SNL, she was forced to acknowledge her own legacy in Hollywood. The sketch resolved in a “nepo truce,” with all intoning, “a foot in the door and so much more.”
Johnson’s keen sense of her own place in the celebrity ecosystem only put Timberlake’s depleted mojo in greater relief when he did end up showing up for a sketch, miscalculating how nostalgia would play. He reunited with his old pal Jimmy Fallon, another celeb who doesn’t have the support he once did, for an edition of “The Barry Gibb Talk Show,” the long-running bit where they’ve played the sibling members of the Bee Gees hosting a political talk show.
But of all of the sketches to bring back, “The Barry Gibb Talk Show” seemed like another miscalculation. After all, the brother whom Timberlake plays, Robin Gibb, died in 2012. What was once a cute spoof of ’70s icons now seems like an exhumation of the dead. And that’s probably not the kind of association Timberlake wants when it comes to his own career.