Justin Timberlake confirmed for the first time publicly that he and wife Jessica Biel welcomed a baby boy to their family in 2020. The couple, already parents to 5-year-old son Silas, named their second child Phineas.
The singer and actor was speaking in an interview on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” set to air Jan. 18, and shared that his baby boy is “awesome” and “so cute.” He also added that in the Timberlake-Biel household right now, “nobody is sleeping.” Watch the video above for more about Timberlake’s sweet, albeit belated, announcement.
While Timberlake didn’t confirm exactly when Phineas came along in the interview teasers shared, there were reports back in July that the couple had quietly had a second child during the pandemic.
The name Phineas is of Hebrew origin. According to the baby names website Nameberry, it is likely derived from an Egyptian variation, Pa-nehasi, meaning “the Nubian,” which translates as “the bronze-coloured one.”
Timberlake has spoken in the past about how he is committed to raising his kids to be anti-racist. On Father’s Day last year, he shared the values he was working on passing along to his firstborn, in the hopes of breaking the cycle of what he describes as “generations of discrimination that have plagued our system and our communities across this country” in an Instagram post:
“We try to teach our son to love and to respect everyone — we teach him that all people are all created equal, and that no one should be treated differently because of the colour of their skin. We teach him this because one day, he will go on to teach his kids the same.”
The singer has been repeatedly accused of cultural appropriation throughout his career. He was observed to use African-American slang and adopt a different accent, while being interviewed alongside SZA, in a previous Ellen interview in 2020. And he has also been widely cited as an example of white male privilege.
Most notably, Timberlake accepted an invitation to return and perform at the Super Bowl in 2018, yet failed to defend Janet Jackson after she was banned following their 2004 performance, in which he pulled down her costume and exposed her nipple in a wardrobe malfunction.
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