Speaking in a virtual court hearing on Wednesday, Britney Spears sounded quite like the person who used to banter on the set of TRL or in Radio Disney interviews. Her slight Southern lilt is still there, as is her affection for sarcastic understatement. “Ma’am, I will tell you, sitting in a chair 10 hours a day, seven days a week, it ain’t fun,” she told Judge Brenda Penny in the hearing, describing meetings she says she was forced to attend. “Especially when you can’t walk out the front door.” She sounded exasperated, angry, and rushed, but it’s clearly Britney.
Still, in its scope and its pathos, the 23-minute speech was like nothing we have ever heard from her. For years now, Spears has remained silent as the conservatorship she was placed under in 2008 became a matter of public debate, even as the oddity of her legal arrangement was laid bare by the February New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears. (She declined to comment, save for one cryptic post in which she said she cried after watching it.) After Spears finished speaking on Wednesday, even Joe Coscarelli, the Times reporter who has followed the case closely for years, was surprised. “I truly never expected what we heard from Britney in court today,” he tweeted. The allegations she makes are truly stomach-turning, and her portrayal of her life is bleaker than perhaps even the most assiduous followers of her story were prepared for.
Though it’s halting and a bit repetitive, Spears’s statement carefully puts forth an argument that should dampen any remaining skepticism about the thrust of #FreeBritney. It frames her central demand—a desire to end the conservatorship without additional evaluation—with powerful details that underscore how she experienced the court’s previous impositions as abuse. She repeats the argument that came up in Framing Britney Spears, questioning how a person who is able to earn an income should be subject to such egregious, court-ordered control over her life.
And though at several points she apologized for knowing so little about the conservatorship process, she clearly knows her own worth. “I wasn’t good—I was great,” she said, about her work in the months leading up to her 2019 involuntary stay in a mental health facility. “I led a room of 16 new dancers in rehearsals.” She’s walking a complicated line between establishing herself as an authority and as a person who is willing to respect the strictures set by the court.
It might be why she sounded so much like teenage Britney when she spoke on Wednesday. Presenting with a teen girl’s affect—uptalking, a bit of vocal fry, a lot of apologizing—is a way to ask for something without ruffling feathers. You’d be hard-pressed to find an American woman who hasn’t felt compelled to do this. Spears’s early career was an important reminder of how much derision is aimed at the intelligence and taste of girls, even when they do have the power to determine what is popular and make money for others.
Framing Britney Spears included clips from her famous old interviews with Diane Sawyer and Matt Lauer, in which she comes across as surprisingly lucid and funny even in the outrageous circumstances—a young woman being grilled by adults for her supposed sins. Some 20 years later, her court appearance put her in a similar position. Hearing Spears describe the “scummy paparazzi” she encountered after a recent therapy appointment in Westlake, Los Angeles, is a bracing reminder of the powerful personality that helped turn her into a superstar. It’s also heartbreaking.
In the years immediately after the conservatorship began in early 2008, it was largely seen as a success. Spears’s career quickly recovered when she released her sixth album, the fan-favorite Circus, and underwent a 98-date world tour. Her perfume empire continued to grow, and her four-year Las Vegas residency reportedly grossed about $138 million. But the Britney her audience was left with was always distant, as if the bubbly person we used to see on TV was walled off from the world. Her Instagram account became such an object of fascination because it reminded fans of her personality without really giving a full view of her life. She posted about things she did to seek joy, like painting and choreography, but some of the important trappings of adulthood just weren’t there. Regardless of what happens in the courts, after her Wednesday testimony that distance is irrevocably closed now. We know what she is really thinking.
In a Thursday post, Spears admitted that the social media version of her life wasn’t the whole picture. “I apologize for pretending like I’ve been ok the past two years,” she wrote. “I did it because of my pride and I was embarrassed to share what happened to me.”
At some point in time, the stress of the year when she shaved her head and was suffering obvious mental distress became an inspirational saying on social media. “If Britney can survive 2007, you can make it through this,” the years-old meme reads. In a Thursday Instagram post, Lena Dunham said that she owned a mug with the saying, and it was comforting for her as she was experiencing her own struggles with addiction and chronic illness. But Spears’s testimony is a sign that even though she did make it through her most difficult years, it came at an excruciating cost. In some ways, she is still stuck there.
— A Messy Vaccinated Wedding Season Has Arrived
— How Harry and Meghan Decided On the Name Lilibet Diana
— Black Joy Comes to Shakespeare in the Park
— Even More Kanye West and Irina Shayk Details Emerge
— The Bennifer Story Really Does Have Everything
— Ahead of the Diana Tribute, Harry and William Are Still Working On Their Relationship
— Tommy Dorfman on Rewriting Queer Narratives and the Smell of Good Sweat
— From the Archive: A Spin on the Top DJs in the World
— Sign up for the “Royal Watch” newsletter to receive all the chatter from Kensington Palace and beyond.