Ten years ago, Jasmine Villegas skyrocketed to stardom after she starred as Justin Bieber‘s love interest in the iconic “Baby” music video! Now, the 26-year-old’s life looks a little bit different, but that didn’t stop her from taking a walk down memory lane to share some pretty epic behind-the-scenes secrets from working alongside the heartthrob back in the day.
That’s right, J-14 recently caught up with Jasmine and she spilled some serious tea about her her claim to fame and, of course, revealed whether or not she’s still in touch with Justin!
“[Time] really did fly by, from being on the set of ‘Baby’ — when I got there, I really didn’t know who [Justin] was — and then for that song to be one of the biggest songs ever is even crazier. Time definitely flew by for sure,” she said.
In order to celebrate the ten-year anniversary, Jasmine teamed up with the brand new Taki app and has plans to chat with a special group of fans via Zoom on Thursday, August 6, at 6:00 P.M. PST to talk all things “Baby.” Although she’s going “to give my supporters an opportunity to talk to me about the video” in just a few weeks, that didn’t stop Jasmine from telling us exactly how she got cast in the visual.
“I had a friend who was filming for Justin at the time. They just showed him videos of me singing and then they just picked me and I was like, ‘OK, cool,'” she remembered, before sharing a pretty hilarious story about filming the entire thing in a bowling ally.
“It was really funny, a lot of people don’t know this because in the video, it looks like we’re [bowling] strikes the whole time — actually straight gutters. We had to act like we were like super confident that like we were getting strikes, but it was so embarrassing when you just got a gutter and then had to act like you just got a strike. That was really funny!” she gushed.
As fans know, after the music video was released, Jasmine became a major star. Not only did she start to release her own music, but she even got the chance to go on tour with Justin himself!
“I ended up going on tour with him for the second half of his My World Tour. So, being in that video helped me a lot when it came to my career. I’ll always be appreciative of that,” the singer said. “He made me feel really, really comfortable when it came to being [on stage]. He just made me realize that it’s OK to make mistakes, we can forget words, we’re normal. We’re not exactly supposed to be perfect.”
Aside from the positive aspects of fame that being in the music video brought, there was also some negative aspects, too.
“It was overwhelming, but really taught me how to have tough skin because all the attention isn’t always good attention. I gained a lot of fans, but at the same time, his core fans are girls. So, being on tour after [the video] a lot of fans took it personally when I was pushing him around in the video and thought it was real when it was acting,” the musician said. “It really taught me how to have tough skin. It was a great experience. I mean, you can’t win everybody over, but for the most part it was a great experience.”
What’s Jasmine’s advice for upcoming artists who might be experiencing the same type of backlash online?
“Just remember who you are,” she said. “Nobody knows exactly who you are, but yourself. A lot of people have assumptions of who they think you are just based off of what you put out online, but what people don’t realize is we only put out what we want people to see. So, we know who we are regardless, and [don’t] let [the hate] get to you.”
Now that she’s older and ten years have gone by, the big question is: does Jasmine still keep up with Justin’s career now? Yep, thanks to her daughter, Ameera, she knows all his new songs!
“His new music that has just come out, like ‘Yummy,’ she loves it My daughter also discovered TikTok, not that long ago, so she’s actually introduced me to songs that I didn’t even know existed,” she dished.
Get this you, guys, Jasmine even showed her daughter the “Baby” video for the first time. Naturally, she totally freaked out!
“I ended up like playing the video for her and I was like, ‘who’s that?’ She’s like, ‘is that you?’ After that she like played it five times. She was so happy,” the singer said.
Although it’s been “years” since she’s seen or hung out with Justin, he made the moment with her daughter even better by commenting “Wow so cute,” on an Instagram video of Ameera saying she loved him “so much.”
“For him to see the video and comment on it, it wasn’t specifically like he was talking to me, but I feel like he was talking to my daughter, which is really sweet of him,” Jasmine said.
What’s next for the songstress? Well, aside from taking care of her two kids, Jasmine has some brand new music in the works — stay tuned!
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