What happens in the mouse house doesn't stay in the mouse house. That's what we learned today after Christina Aguilera spilled the decades-old tea about who was crushing on who on the Mickey Mouse Club way back in 1995 when the class included Aguilera, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Ryan Gosling.
In between belting out her biggest hits on The Late Late Show's Carpool Karaoke, X-Tina revealed to host James Corden that there were, in fact, plenty of prepubescent crushes and love triangles among the cast.
"Even then, at that age, could you find yourself getting lost in Ryan Gosling's eyes?" Corden asked The Voice judge. Aguilera's awkward attempts at dodging a real answer were hilarious and very telling. "Ryan pretty much — he did have a crush on Britney," she divulged. But ultimately, it was Timberlake's teen "swag" that won over Spears, leading them to become "a big old couple," as Aguilera described them.
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(Gosling, of course, eventually ended up with Eva Mendes and is doing just fine. And Spears and Timberlake, during their three-year relationship, went on to give us pop culture gifts we will forever be thankful for.)
If that wasn't enough, the real surprise of the Carpool segment was when Melissa McCarthy literally popped into the backseat during Aguilera's performance of "Dirrty," delivering the most perfect rendition of Redman's aggressive rap you will hear. She's not a singer, but we're all for McCarthy coming back and doing nothing but covers in the front seat with Corden.
This is Aguilera's third major public appearance in the past few months: she was a spirited guest-judge on the season 10 premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race and went bare-faced on an arresting cover of Paper Magazine. In the issue, she revealed how happy she was to help break down barriers and expectations for the younger generation of women finding their voice in the music industry today.
"Madonna had to go through it in her day, and she paved the way for my generation to come up," she explained. "And paying it forward, now a younger generation is coming up and I'm loving what I'm seeing. It's so incredible."
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