Diane Sawyer, queen of US television’s celebrity interview, sat down opposite Britney Spears in her candlelit living room, put on her most compassionate expression – and then unleashed an interrogation so hostile that it reduced the young singer to tears.
It was 2003, and broadcaster ABC reminded viewers at the start of its exclusive interview that the singer was “the most famous 21-year-old in the world.”
According to Spears in her long-awaited memoir, she may also have been at her most miserable at the end of their conversation in the New York apartment where she lived alone.
Sawyer called out her sexually provocative image, her hypocrisy in promises about her virginity and drug abstinence, her shopping addiction, her infamous kiss with Madonna (during an awards show appearance earlier that year), and even her quality singing voice.
But whether Sawyer knew it or not, what really hurt was her suggestion that Spears was the culprit in her breakup with pop star Justin Timberlake – her first serious boyfriend – and that he was the one distraught over her breakup. Founded in 2002 after three years together.
In the 275-page book “The Woman In Me,” Spears says she was shocked when Timberlake made a video for his song “Cry Me A River,” in which “a woman who looks like me cheats on him and he sadly wandering in the rain.”
Britney Spears is particularly keen to set the record straight with Timberlake, who has repeatedly said he was “scorned” and betrayed (pictured together in 2002).
Britney’s infamous kiss with Madonna during her performance at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards
In the 275-page publication “The Woman In Me,” excerpts of which the Mail has seen ahead of its release next week, Spears says she was shocked when Timberlake made a video for his song “Cry Me A River,” in dem “a woman who…” “Looks like I’m cheating on him and he’s walking around sad in the rain.”
She says it led to a media backlash that made her feel like a “whore who broke the heart of America’s golden boy,” when in reality she says, “I was in a coma in Louisiana and he ran happily through Hollywood.” .’ She continues: “Everyone felt very sorry for him…Wherever I went I could get booed.”
She refused to say anything when Sawyer accused her of infidelity – ignoring Spears’ obvious discomfort.
Now, 20 years later, she has finally spoken out on the subject in her highly anticipated autobiography. It’s full of anger and sadness, but also shows the delayed development of stars who become super famous at a young age – Spears had her first big hit… Baby One More Time, at just 16 years old.
The singer admits that even when she became a mother she felt like a child – especially after control of her life and a £50million fortune was handed over to her father as part of a controversial 13-year conservatorship. Spears complained this week that she had been “sitting back” for years “while people talked about me and told my story for me.” Well, she tells it her own way now.
She reveals that she lost her virginity to one of her brother’s friends when she was around 14, and that she became pregnant when she and Timberlake were both 19. However, after he made it clear that he considered her “far too young” to start a family, she agreed to have an abortion – “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life”.
If she had been left alone, she would never have done it, she says. As she lay on the bathroom floor “crying and sobbing” after the procedure, Timberlake tried to cheer her up by playing the guitar. She also reveals how he texted her in 2002 to tell her he wanted to end their relationship, which left her in a “clinical state of shock”.
Although Spears, 41, confirmed a rumor that she kissed Wade Robson, a choreographer, during her relationship with Timberlake, she says he cheated on her with other women – something she turned a blind eye to.
After the split, she had a much-discussed affair with Irish actor Colin Farrell, whom she met through a “club promoter friend” before visiting him on the set of his 2003 film SWAT
Spears then accompanied him to the premiere of his film The Recruit, where he told reporters: “There’s nothing going on – just friends.” But in her memoir, Spears says of their affair: “Fight is the only word for it – we were all at each other and “We fought so passionately it was like we were in a street brawl,” admitting she wasn’t done with her relationship with Timberlake.
“Like before, when I had felt too attached to a man, I tried in every way to convince myself that it was no big deal, that we were just having fun and that in this case I was vulnerable because I was I’m not over Justin yet. “For a brief moment I thought there might be something there.”
The troubled singer also attacks Diane Sawyer, saying the interview was a “breaking point”. She claims she was pressured into it by her father and the management team to promote her latest album. “I felt like I was being exploited and exposed to the whole world,” she says. (Her estranged father Jamie insists he was not involved.)
In a 2003 interview, Diane Sawyer (right) called Britney’s attention to her image, her “shopping addiction” and even the quality of her singing voice. What hurt most, however, was her suspicion that Spears was the culprit in her split from pop star Justin Timberlake
In June 2021, Britney finally spoke out publicly against a legal regulation that she said was exploitative and abusive
Spears is particularly keen to set the record straight about Timberlake, who has repeatedly said he was “scorned” and betrayed. The singer, who met Timberlake when they were child stars on TV’s “Mickey Mouse Club,” says she was so “devastated” after the split that she considered quitting show business.
At the very least, their romance showed her how objectified she was because talk show hosts had treated the young stars so differently.
“Everyone kept making weird comments about my breasts and wanting to know whether I had had plastic surgery or not,” she says.
It was an unpleasant male interest that she says she felt from a young age. She remembers appearing on the TV talent show Star Search at the age of ten and host Ed McMahon asking her if she had a boyfriend. When she said she didn’t do it because boys were “mean,” McMahon said, “I’m not mean!” How about me?’
Spears said as soon as she left the stage she “burst into tears.” She also reveals that, in contrast to her carefully honed image as a clean-living Bible Belt teenager, she was already drinking rum daiquiris with her mother, Lynne, at the age of 14.
After the singer became a star, she began taking the antidepressant Prozac due to criticism. She insists that while she has been photographed partying with the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, “it was never as wild as the press made it out to be.”
She says she had no interest in hard drugs like cocaine and “never had a drinking problem.” Her medication of choice was ADHD med Adderall. The drug “got me high, yes, but what I found even more attractive was that it made me feel less depressed for a few hours.”
Spears says her mental health issues worsened after the end of her three-year marriage to dancer Kevin Federline in 2007 and a custody battle over their two children. “I aged backwards.” “As a new mother, it was as if part of me had become a baby,” she writes.
She says she was “mad with grief” when her head was shaved in a very public meltdown in front of photographers later that year. A few days later, she attacked a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella.
Hitting shelves next Tuesday! In her highly anticipated memoir The Woman In Me, Britney Spears finally reveals her two-week affair with Colin Farrell (left, pictured in 2003).
Legs for days: Britney Spears has revealed she lost her virginity long before her romance with Justin Timberlake – contradicting her previous claims
By that time, she was already in a rehabilitation facility, and after she was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital twice over the next year, her father was named her legal guardian. Some of the singer’s loyal fans insisted that she was essentially the victim of a deceitful, greedy father.
Spears admits that she broke down, saying, “With my shaved head, everyone was afraid of me, even my mother.” As I spent those weeks without my children, I kept losing it. I didn’t even really know how to take care of myself.’
In 2008, a California court approved conservatorship based on her mental health and substance abuse issues, giving her father control over her finances, her career, and her personal life—not just her choice of boyfriend, but even down to her choice of kitchen faucets.
She also accuses her father of exaggerating her drug problems by once sending her to rehab when she was only taking over-the-counter supplements. She claims that conservatory work was “the death of my creativity as an artist.” When she did a residency in Las Vegas, she couldn’t choose which songs she sang.
The conservatorship lasted until 2021, and while her father has insisted that he only ever acted in her best interests, Spears compares it to prison, writing: “I know I acted wildly, but there was nothing I did what justified their treatment. ‘I’m like a bank robber.’
She says her father once told her, “I’m Britney Spears now,” even though she continued to record and perform, earning millions from them. “Too sick to choose my own boyfriend and yet somehow healthy enough to appear on sitcoms and morning shows and perform in front of thousands of people in a different part of the world every week,” she complains. She came to believe that her father viewed her as merely the family’s cash cow.
If reports that her father had consulted lawyers about the book are true, he had good reason to be concerned.
She has little positive to say about him, highlighting his alcoholism and saying his criticism of her figure – “he kept telling me I looked fat” – was even more hurtful than the media’s harsh remarks.
She writes of her life under the conservatory’s management: “Security guards handed me pre-packaged envelopes of medication and watched as I took them.” They installed parental controls on my iPhone. Everything was carefully examined and checked. Everything.’ She adds: “I became a robot. But not just a robot – a kind of child robot.”
Spears says after unsuccessful attempts to get it overturned, things came to a head in late 2018 when she spent another three months in rehab. Her father, she says, threatened to portray her as an “idiot” in court if she refused to go.
At the £50,000 facility in Beverly Hills she wasn’t even allowed to take a private bath or close the door to her room. She was only allowed to watch television one hour before bedtime at 9 p.m. and was not allowed to leave the premises.
However, one of the nurses there showed her footage of her fans protesting in the #FreeBritney movement, which was “the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
In June 2021, she finally spoke out publicly against a legal regulation that she said was exploitative and abusive.
When her father was removed as her carer, she says, “I felt relief wash over me… the man who had frightened me as a child and lorded it over me as an adult, who had contributed more than anyone else to me to undermine…”Self-confidence was no longer in control of my life.”
Now she’s free, what’s next for Britney? Fans will be disappointed to learn that the singer has no current plans to record any more music as she thinks it’s “time to actually find myself.”
Considering that this process currently consists of posting videos of herself on Instagram, dancing around in skimpy outfits and wielding provocatively large knives, it seems that the Princess of Pop has not yet found the calm and maturity she wants she longs.