Janet Jackson says she told Justin Timberlake not to comment on the "wardrobe malfunction"

The “wardrobe malfunction” from the 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show, when Justin Timberlake ripped off a part of Janet Jackson’s outfit at the end of a song and kicked off an enormous controversy, has hung around as a part of pop culture ever since… though you wouldn’t know it if you only followed Justin Timberlake’s career. He’s gone nowhere but up, more or less, all without ever really acknowledging that Jackson faced pretty much all of the blame for an incident that was definitely more his fault than her fault, so it seemed like an opportunity to make things somewhat right when Timberlake was given a chance to solo headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2018—but Jackson didn’t make an appearance, even when Timberlake referenced the very incident that got her in trouble.

But, according to an appearance from Jackson herself during Lifetime’s two-part Janet Jackson documentary series (via The Hollywood Reporter), she actually turned down an offer to join Timberlake at the Super Bowl in 2018. She says his team asked if she’d be interested in performing with him during the show, and while she admits that it would’ve been nice to get on the stage, it would just be “stretching out the past” and “reliving something that happened over 10 years ago.”

As it turns out, Jackson has moved past what happened in 2004, saying it was “blown way out of proportion” and that, while it “was an accident” that “should not have happened,” there’s no need to keep looking for someone to blame. She says she and Timberlake are “very good friends” and they’ve “moved on.”

Jackson also revealed how Timberlake reacted right after the Super Bowl, saying they “talked once” and he said he wasn’t sure if he should make a statement, to which she said that she didn’t want him to have to deal with “any drama,” adding, “If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything.” Of course, Timberlake should’ve recognized that that doesn’t literally mean “don’t say anything,” so one could argue that it’s still fair to point out that his lack of a response did nothing but benefit him and lay all of the blame on her, but that would be defying her request for everyone to stop searching for someone to blame.

This is also the second documentary project to hit TV in the last few months, with The New York Times’ Malfunction: The Dressing Down Of Janet Jackson (which she did not participate in) airing in November.