Judge Judy and Justin Bieber were once neighbors, and their relationship wasn’t exactly friendly.
In a new interview with Access Hollywood, the TV staple said the singer was scared of her when she talked openly about his run-ins with the law, namely his 2014 DUI.
“He’s scared to death of me,” the 80-year-old told the outlet. “There was a period of time before he grew up—when he was foolish, and doing foolish things.”
She explained that Bieber asked his security to keep tabs on her schedule so they wouldn’t run into each other. “I must have said something about it, and then, I understood that he was paying the front door people to let them know when I was there, coming and going, so he wouldn’t have to bump into me,” she said.
Judge Judy criticized the now-28-year-old’s DUI arrest in January 2014. “Being a celebrity is a gift,” she told CBS Los Angeles at the time. “You could either treat it reverently or you could make a fool out of yourself. And he’s doing a very good job of making a fool out of himself. I think it’s sad. And nobody’s going to remember that he was a marginal singer. But they’re going to remember a young kid who had a chance to have it all and who is blowing it by acting like a fool.”
Bieber shared an Instagram post on the seventh anniversary of his Miami arrest, writing that he was “hurting, unhappy, confused, angry, mislead, misunderstood and angry at god” at the time. He’s turned his life around since his teen years, having married to Hailey Baldwin in 2018 and avoided legal issues since the DUI.