Britney Spears posted a 22-minute voice memo addressing her conservatorship over the weekend, deleting it within a few hours. Sharing the clip in a Twitter thread, Spears further detailed her experiences under the conservatorship and her feelings about her family’s involvement. “I haven’t honestly shared this openly because I’ve always been scared of the judgement, and definitely the embarrassment of the whole thing,” she said, adding later, “It’s unbelievably offensive, sad, abusive, and, honestly, would anybody believe me?”
Spears claimed that she was forcibly hospitalized under circumstances that she later understood were pre-arranged. Spears said that she spent a few weeks in the hospital, after which she appeared in an episode of How I Met Your Mother and then began work on her 2008 album Circus. “They made me feel like nothing,” she said.
She said that the conservatorship began when she was 25, and that she never understood why it was put into place. She re-asserted her claim that her mother, Lynne, suggested the conservatorship to her father, James “Jamie” Spears, and that, under his control. she was not allowed to travel freely, drink alcohol, drive, or change clothes in privacy.
Spears further detailed the frustration she felt at the conservatorship’s restrictions along with seeing her family enjoying the fruits of her work from which she was barred. “How did they get away with it, and what the fuck did I do to deserve that?” Spears asked at one point. She said that, while rehearsing for a 2017 tour, she expressed that she didn’t want to do a particular dance move, and that the following day she was sent to inpatient treatment. When she resisted the idea, Spears said her father threatened her with significant legal action. She later added that she was forced to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings despite not being an alcoholic.
Spears credited the #FreeBritney movement with bringing public attention to her situation, even as she felt like her mother and her sister (Jamie Lynn Spears) were enabling the conservatorship’s harm. “I cared so much,” Spears said of her career, “And they literally killed me. They threw me away. I felt like my family threw me away.” Elsewhere, she discussed being subjected to regular weekly blood draws, later clarifying the volume of those draws in a tweet that she has not deleted.
During one tour, Spears said, she had a secret relationship about which she confided in her assistant. Spears recalled being fearful of what her father would do if he found out she’d left the country to go meet her romantic partner. She was apparently more upset, however, with her mother. “I heard when reporters would call her at the time and ask questions of what was going on, she would go innocently hide in the house, and she wouldn’t speak up,” Spears said.
Tagged: entertainment blog, music blog, NEWS