WASHINGTON — Pop star Justin Timberlake was charged early Tuesday with driving while intoxicated in a village in New York's Hamptons, after police said he ran a stop sign and veered out of his lane in the posh seaside summer retreat.
The boy band singer-turned-solo star and actor was driving a 2025 BMW in Sag Harbor around 12:30 a.m. when an officer stopped him and determined he was intoxicated, according to a court document.
“His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from his breath, he was unable to divide attention, he had slowed speech, he was unsteady afoot and he performed poorly on all standardized field sobriety tests,” the court papers said.
Timberlake, 43, was released without bond later Tuesday morning after being arraigned in Sag Harbor. He was charged with a DWI misdemeanor, and his next court date was scheduled for July 26, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office said.
Timberlake’s lawyer and representatives did not immediately return requests for comment from The Associated Press.
A young Timberlake began performing as a Disney Mouseketeer, where his castmates included future girlfriend Britney Spears. He rose to fame in the behemoth boy band NSYNC, embarked on a solo recording career in 2002 and was one of pop’s most influential figures in the early 2000s.
Fluent in the inflections of pop and R&B, he has won 10 Grammy awards for such hits as “Cry Me A River,” “Sexy Back,” “What Goes Around...Comes Around” and “Can’t Stop The Feeling!” He has performed at Super Bowl halftime shows multiple times, including the infamous 2004 “wardrobe malfunction” moment when he ripped off a piece of Janet Jackson’s clothing and revealed her bare nipple.
The episode led to Jackson’s exclusion from the Grammy telecast a week later. She said in a 2022 documentary that what happened was an accident and that she and Timberlake remained good friends.
Timberlake also built an acting career, garnering acclaim in movies including "The Social Network” and “Friends With Benefits” and winning four Primetime Emmy Awards.
Last year, Timberlake was in the headlines when Spears released her memoir, “The Woman in Me.” Several chapters were devoted to their relationship, including deeply personal details about a pregnancy, abortion and painful breakup. In March, he released his first new album in six years, the nostalgic “Everything I Thought It Was,” a return to his familiar future funk sound.
Timberlake has two upcoming shows in Chicago on Friday and Saturday, then is scheduled for New York's Madison Square Garden next week on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Sag Harbor, a onetime whaling village mentioned in Herman Melville’s classic novel “Moby-Dick,” is nestled amid the Hamptons, around 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of New York City.
Located on a bay, Sag Harbor for years cultivated a more down-to-earth, “un-Hampton” reputation than its oceanfront neighbors — a place where people gathered not at a country club but at a corner bar called the Corner Bar. There is still a five-and-dime store, and the fanciest place in town is the quaint, cozy mid-19th-century American Hotel.
The village has long had its share of prominent homeowners and residents, including singer-songwriter Billy Joel, Nobel Prize-winning novelist John Steinbeck, feminist writer Betty Friedan, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead and playwright Lanford Wilson. Whitehead’s “Sag Harbor” is set there, particularly in a beachfront enclave where generations of Black families have spent summers.
In recent decades, Sag Harbor has increasingly become a destination for celebrities, wannabes and even cruise ships. Its evolving nature has prompted grumbles from some longtime residents about traffic, crowds and a changing character.
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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Karen Matthews in New York and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.