Britney Spears' character Lucy in "Crossroads" drives a '73 Buick convertible with the top down and starts singing along to a familiar tune on the radio. I don’t want to be a fool in this two-person game… Soon, her childhood best friends Kit (Zoe Saldaña) and Mimi (Taryn Manning) enthusiastically join in for an impromptu rendition of *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” show, while their new friend, Ben (Anson Mount), sits motionless behind the wheel.
"Crossroads" director Tamra Davis says that amid all the misfires in the 2002 coming-of-age comedy, the musical moments hold special significance. "The [*NSYNC] scene encapsulated what was going on in the music industry at the time," she recently explained to Entertainment Weekly . "The music [Ben] wants to hear is Nirvana and alternative grunge, and the music girls want to hear is *NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, and boy bands. We love that contrast on the radio."
Although Davis can't remember if "Bye Bye Bye" from the band's 2000 hit single "No Strings Attached" was "It's clearly laid out in the script," she said, doing her best to manage expectations. "I think we didn't know if we had the rights until the very last moment because it's such a huge song," she revealed.
While it's unclear whether Spears' relationship with Justin Timberlake would have affected the approval process, Davis noted that "Crossroads" was filmed "in the middle of the two of them being together." She called her now exes "the cutest couple at the time," and even shared that Timberlake was on set when the "Overprotective" singer was filming the Shonda Rhimes-penned movie .
Not yet a woman
At the time, Spears was hoping to emerge with a more mature image after her "girl next door" days on The Mickey Mouse Club . Not everyone agrees, though, and elsewhere in the Entertainment Weekly interview, Davis described how she "definitely had to fight for something" to stay in the script, including Lucy and Ben's PG- 13 sex scenes.
"She wanted to [challenge] the image that she was always a virgin," Davis explained, noting that Spears' intimate scenes were shot in a tasteful way so that "a kid wouldn't know what was really going on. ." Davis added, "It was a battle and I'm glad we won."
end of road
"Crossroads" is also back in the headlines due to Spears' upcoming memoir, " The Woman Inside Me" (out Oct. 24). In an excerpt shared by People magazine, the pop star shared her struggles with "method acting" while filming the 2002 film.
"I didn't know how to break away from my character. I literally became a different person. Some people do method acting, but they usually realize they're doing it. But I didn't have any dissociation at all," she wrote. After production wrapped, Spears, who also auditioned for The Notebook, ultimately decided that this was pretty much the "beginning and end" of her acting career.
"I think some people in show business have dealt with something similar, where they have a hard time separating themselves from their characters," she added. "I hope I'm never exposed to that kind of occupational hazard again. Living like that, half yourself and half a fictional character, is a mess. After a while, you don't know what's real anymore."
