A Woman Claiming to Be Justin Timberlake's Daughter Says He Was Abusive — but Are the Allegations True?

Everyone loves a celebrity scandal, which is why we follow accounts like DeuxMoi and listen to podcasts like Who? Weekly. But when it comes to Justin Timberlake, we hate hearing rumors that paint our favorite NSYNC star in a bad light, especially after we know he’s not as perfect as he appeared to be in the early 2000s after Britney Spears’s tell-all memoir alleged cheating allegations and even an abortion.

Now, various TikTok accounts are rehashing a scandal regarding a woman who claims to be Justin Timberlake’s “secret daughter,” Iris Timberlake. Under the now-defunct Instagram account @axolotl_3000, “Iris” shared a birth certificate and horror stories growing up under Justin’s parentage. However, other accounts claim that she’s a fraud. So who is the woman claiming to be Justin’s daughter and is the scandal true?

On May 20, 2024, TikToker and celebrity gossip influencer RiRi’s Tea shared a video outlining “Iris’s” allegations against Justin. The 22-year-old woman, who claims she was born on Feb. 4, 2002, says that her name is Iris Timberlake and shared a birth certificate with Justin Randall Timberlake as the father.

Throughout her Instagram account, she shares unsettling and inappropriate anecdotes about growing up with Justin as a father. Her story is that her mother and Justin met in 2001 when Justin was about 20 years old and that he paid off her mother to keep their relationship and daughter’s identity secret. While that doesn’t sound too far out, “Iris” continues making allegations against Justin, going as far as to claim physical, sexual, verbal, and other forms of abuse.

In screenshots shared by RiRi’s Tea, as well as Redditor uccidero, “Iris” alleges Justin frequently had different women over in the house when she was growing up and that he sexually assaulted her and forced her to have an abortion. She also claims that Justin “touched [his son] Silas in the past” and that he would watch porn with the kids present in the house.

But on her page, “Iris” also shares photos of period blood and a prank in which she pooped onto some fries and sent them in an elevator to a different floor of her hotel. It’s clear from the variety of posts that something is amiss with “Iris,” whether her mental health or even her entire identity. Luckily, one internet sleuth figured out the truth.

“Iris Timberlake” has existed for years and has consistently been trying to spread defaming rumors about Justin. While we are now in the era of rapid-fire rumor-spreading thanks to TikTok, we are also in an era where the truth can easily be uncovered. The Twitter account @jcjustinho started deep-diving on “Iris” in November 2023 and figured out that whoever is behind it is using other people’s identities to catfish the world and make their claims.

“That Britney fan that’s cosplaying [as] Justin’s secret daughter who doesn’t actually exist, Iris Timberlake, ya gotta do better. Taking others' content and passing it off as your own to give the illusion that this fake person was at the Trolls premiere is suuuuuper sloppy,” @jcjustinho tweeted at the time.

The fan account used a side-by-side to show how “Iris” took content already shared on the internet of the Trolls premiere, added her own filters and edits, and then tried to make it out as her own, proving that she was not actually at the premiere. Beyond that, the Justin fan account discovered that “Iris” was using the photos of a Ukrainian model, actress, and DJ who lives in LA named Katana Grace.

Katana likely had no idea her likeness was being used in this way, and as the sleuth points out, the catfisher often used filters and potential photos of other blond women to fabricate her identity as Iris Timberlake. Through research, they found that the woman whom “Iris” claimed was her mother and Katana’s actual mother are two different people, proving the false identity.

In addition, the picture “Iris” used of her “mother” with Justin was actually a fan pic of Justin with a blogger named Chandra Fredrick. “Chandra has three boys with her husband but no secret daughter. She met Justin once backstage during the Celebrity tour. According to a private IG post, her cousin worked for Rob Zombie and got them tickets and backstage passes,” the sleuth shared.

Additionally, the photo of Chandra with Justin was taken on April 4, 2002, which is two months after the “Iris” birth certificate says she was born, proving yet another hole in the “Iris” story. While we don’t know who is really behind the rumors about Justin’s “daughter,” we do know that there are too many holes for the story to be true.

Justin may not be a perfect man, but as far as we know, he’s still a decent father.