I'll Always Remember Us This Way: Britney Spears & Colin Farrell

Every time we say goodbye, baby it hurts

I’ll Always Remember Us This Way is a new series I’m starting dedicated to not only Lady Gaga’s iconic tribute song to dead Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born, but also the people, places, things, and ideas that were so perfect, and of their time, yet cease to exist today.

Earlier this week it was announced that Britney Spears’ poorly titled memoir The Woman In Me was scheduled for release this summer, but was sadly delayed four months because a couple of gentlemen callers were worried about how they’d be portrayed. Said gentlemen and their lawyers subsequently asked her to remove passages, which she did. The gentlemen callers in question? Justin Timberlake, and Colin Farrell.

And you may be saying to yourself, Meech, I didn’t know the Princess of Pop and Earl of Eyebrows dated! Tell me more! Well guess what? They did! And guess what else? I will! We don’t have to go into details about what Justin did to Britney, how he dragged her name through the mud, slut shamed her, and garnered one of the biggest hits of his solo career from the song and flop video where he killed Scarlett Johansson in a car crash. We all know what happened, and we hate him for it—what I will say is, Justified and Future Sex/Love Sounds are fantastic albums—but we STILL hate him! And that brings us to Colin Farrell.

Get in the car loser, we’re going back to 2003! But first, we must make a pit stop in August of 2002. This is when Colin Farrell made the infamous sex tape with Playboy Playmate and model Nicole Narain. Yes—that sex tape—she recorded where he uttered his perfect line of “breakfast, lunch, and fucking dinner” this tape was part of the domino effect of many celebrity sex tapes, with Paris Hilton’s crudely monikered One Night In Paris hitting websites everywhere in 2004, and Kim K’s sex tape with Ray J following behind (no pun intended) just three years later.

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Earlier this week, paid subscribers brushed up on the Bombs vs Bombshells

The Battle of Barbenheimer

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These sex tapes being released onto the internet were a huge invasion of privacy—but it’s sad to say everyone’s career was better off after them. Sad! Farrell would later sue Narain for the distribution of said sex tape without his authorization, a messy battle, that much like Pam and Tommy, quickly spun out of control once the tape had left the hands of both parties involved.

At this point, Farrell was at the height of his career. He had just wrapped a slew of box office hits like Minority Report, and Phone Booth, with Daredevil and SWAT on the way later that year. He was also at the height of his addiction/substance abuse issues which—like Robert Downey, Jr he has talked about endlessly and he now chooses to focus on the present.

There had been whispers about Britney and Colin for a few weeks, but no one really knew anything for sure, until they showed up together on the red carpet premiere of The Recruit (the film Noah Centineo tried to reboot into a television series in 2022, to no avail) on January 28th, 2003.

2003 was a weird time where anything was possible. Eminem’s Lose Yourself had been dominating the airwaves, with Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s 03 Bonnie and Clyde not far behind. (Beyoncé trailing Eminem??? Dark times!) But you’d think two people who the tabloids were whispering about wouldn’t have shown up together, and yet here they were! Fueling the fire!

Back when celebs used to be messy and have a good time

Red carpets used to be much more—how you say—chill about the fashion, as Brit-Brit showed up in just a camisole, and Colin was embracing the metrosexuality of the moment with—that hair—and those clothes. But there’s no denying, SOMETHING was going on here, and

Not much evidence of this tryst has survived the test of time, and the most the tabloids were able to procure was a photo a partygoer took of the two of them locking lips at Colin’s afterparty at Chateau Marmont (now THAT used to be a place to be seen). It may have been short lived, but judging by the fact that he made it into her book, it must have ben something to write home about! And we WILL be reading!

And that ladies and gentleman, is pop culture history. And I’ll always remember them this way.

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