Britney Spears just dropped some major new details about the conservatorship she was put under from 2008 to 2021.
Over the weekend, the 40-year-old pop superstar made headlines with a 22-minute audio recording she uploaded to her official YouTube account. In the audio, she spoke out about her family’s alleged role in the arrangement, how they treated her, and the impact that the #FreeBritney movement had in terminating the conservatorship.
Check out some of the biggest bombshells from her tell-all:
She decided not to do a tell-all interview about her experience.
“I’ve had tons of opportunities – Oprah, interviews – to go on a platform and share the hardships and just really anything that’s going on in my ming. I really don’t think any of that is relevant, getting paid to tell your story. I feel it’s kind of silly.
I haven’t honestly shared this openly too, as well, because I’ve always been scared of the judgement and definitely the embarrassment of the whole thing, period, and the skepticism and the cynical people and their opinions of what people would actually think. [I’m] in a place now where I’m a little bit more confident that I can be willing to share openly my thoughts and what I’ve been through.”
When the conservatorship was put in place, a SWAT team went to her home and she was held down on a gurney.
“I was extremely young, I remember a lot of my friends texting me and calling me and we were extremely close and they wanted to see me. But what had happened, honestly, still to this day I don’t know what really I did, but [due to] the punishment of my father I wasn’t able to see anyone.
There was a SWAT team in my home, three helicopters. I remember my mom’s best friend, and my two girlfriends, we had a sleepover the night before. They held me down on a gurney. Again, none of it made sense. Literally the extent of my ‘madness’ was playing chase with paparazzi, which is still to this day one of the most fun things I ever did about being famous. I don’t know what was so harmful about that.”
A “woman” suggested placing her in a conservatorship to her dad and her mom helped him make it happen.
“I remember my mom was sitting on the couch, and she said, ‘We heard people are coming here today to talk to you. We should probably go to a hotel or something.’ I never really understood what she meant. I didn’t believe her. Like, is a lawyer coming here? Who is coming here? Four hours later, there were over 200 paparazzi outside my house video-taping me through a window of an ambulance, holding me down on a gurney.
I know now it was all premeditated. A woman introduced the idea [of a conservatorship] to my dad, and my mom actually helped him follow through and made it all happen. It was all basically set up. There was no drugs in my system, no alcohol, nothing. It was pure abuse. And I haven’t even really shared half of it.”
Once the conservatorship started she began working right away but she felt like “a robot” – and was always told she was fat.
“All I do remember is I had to do what I was told. I was told I was fat every day. I had to go to the gym, I had to just.. I never remember feeling so demoralized. They made me feel like nothing. And I went along with it because I was scared. I was scared and fearful.
My performances I know were horrible. I even wore wigs. All the dancers were doing all these nice, sexy head-flip turns and I had conditioner treatment in my hair and these little caps over my head … because I was just a robot. I didn’t give a f— anymore because I couldn’t go where I wanted to go, I couldn’t have the nannies that I wanted to have, I couldn’t have cash. It was just demoralizing. I was kind of like in this conspiracy thing of people claiming and treating me like a superstar, but yet they treated me like nothing.”
Her album Glory gave her hope.
“For some reason, I started to get a spark back. I remember recording Glory, and for some reason I think producing and making music … I got the fire back in my eyes for some reason. I was at the end of recording Glory — my son named it — and things start of kind of taking a turn because I started getting more confidence just for myself.
But it was really tricky because I had to just play this role that everything was OK all the time, and I had to go along with it because I knew they could hurt me.”
She was sent to a facility because of something that happened following the end of her Vegas residency in 2017.
“You also have to understand, it was 15 years of touring and doing shows, and I’m 30 years old under my dad’s rules… I was supposed to do a new show … I went to the rehearsals and I said ‘no’ to a dancer. It was like, ‘No, can we do that? I don’t want to do this.’ I just remember everything got really weird … The next day, I was told that I had to be sent away to a facility and that I was supposed to say on my Instagram the reason why is because my dad is sick and I need treatment … I was crying, and I was like, ‘Why are you guys doing this?’”
Her father threatened to take her to trial if she did not go to the facility – and she had no privacy there.
“My heart felt like it was frozen, like it was stuck inside. I wanted to scream and I wanted to get out. I think, by a needle and thread, it was the breathing peacefully inward that I missed the most. I felt like I was in a state of shock. They monitored what I ate. From 8 to 6 I’d work. Sometimes at 9 I’d be able to watch a movie.”
The #FreeBritney campaign helped end her conservatorship.
“The whole thing that made it really confusing for me is these people were on the street were fighting for me. But my sister and my mother aren’t doing anything. To me, it was like they secretly, honestly liked me being the bad one, like I was messed up, and they kind of just liked it that way. Otherwise why weren’t they outside my doorstep saying, ‘Baby girl, get in the car, let’s go.’ I think that’s the main thing that hurt me. I couldn’t process how my family went along with it for so long.”
She felt like her family threw her away, and that she was a machine.
“…How much effort and work and heart I put into what I did when I did work, even down the details of how many rhinestones are going to be in my costume, I cared so much. And they literally killed me. They threw me away. I felt like my family threw me away.
I was a machine. I was a f—ing machine. Not even human, almost. It was insane how hard I worked. And the one time I speak up and say no in the rehearsals, to a f—ing dance move, they got pissed. They put me in an ignorant, scared state of mind to make me feel like I needed them, and if you don’t do what we say, we’re gonna show you who’s boss.”
I didn’t play their game anymore. I got on my knees every day and I prayed. I held on like a needle and thread to some sort of existence because they had made me feel like nothing for so long. I knew in the deepest, deepest part of my core, I knew I’d done nothing wrong and I didn’t deserve the way I’d been treated.”
She is still angry with her mom over her role in all of this.
“I’m honestly more angry at my mom because 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. There was always like, ‘I don’t know what to say. I just don’t want to say the wrong thing. We’re praying for her.’ I feel like she could’ve gotten me a lawyer in literally two seconds … Every time I made contact with a firm, my phone was tapped and they would take my phone away from me.
I had no contact in that place for so long. My heart would just want to stand up in my family’s faces and scream and cry and throw a tantrum and go back in time and do exactly what I wanted to do at those times… Honestly makes me look up and say, ‘How the f— did they get away with it? How is there a God? Is there a God?”
