Britney Spears Turned Down ‘Lots of Money’ For an Interview With Oprah Winfrey
Britney Spears has been speaking her truth about her 13-year conservatorship since the legal arrangement was dissolved in November 2021. Many have been anticipating the “Toxic” singer to sit down with Oprah Winfrey for a revealing interview. But in a bombshell audio message shared (and promptly deleted) in August 2022, Spears revealed that she turned down a hefty offer from Oprah’s team for an interview.
Britney Spears spoke about her conservatorship in an audio message
In August 2022, Spears shared a 22-minute audio message on YouTube recounting her experience in the media circus around her life in 2007 and the conservatorship in 2008.
“I’m here honestly just to open myself to others and try to shed a light on if anyone out there has ever gone through hardships,” she said.
The conservatorship was enacted when Spears was 25 years old, with her father, Jamie Spears, appointed as a conservator.
“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,” Spears said. “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.”
“You have to imagine none of it made sense to me,” she continued. “I literally spoke in a British accent to a doctor to prescribe my medication, and three days later, there was a SWAT team in my home [with] three helicopters. … There were over 200 paparazzi outside my house videotaping me through a window of an ambulance holding me down on a gurney.”
Spears asserted that the conservatorship was pre-planned and viewed by her family as a way to take advantage of her life and finances. “I know now it was all premeditated, and a woman introduced the idea to my dad, and my mom, [and] actually helped him follow through and made it all happen,” she said. “It was all basically set up.”
Britney Spears turned down an interview with Oprah Winfrey for ‘lots of money’
In her August 2022 audio message, Britney Spears revealed her reasoning behind turning down a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey.
“I get nothing out of sharing all of this,” she said honestly. “ have offers to do interviews with Oprah and so many people [for] lots and lots of money, but it’s insane. I don’t want any of it. For me, it’s beyond a sit-down proper interview.”
Spears will be telling her story in a forthcoming memoir.
Jamie Spears’ ‘control’ of his daughter Britney
Britney Spears went on to detail just how her father controlled her throughout the conservatorship. “ e loved to control everything I did. I remember the first day he said, ‘I’m Britney Spears, and I’m calling the shots,’ and I’m like, ‘Alrighty then.’” She was “never ever able to leave or go anywhere” on her own, despite being a grown woman in her twenties and thirties.
“I was told I was fat every day. I had to go to the gym … I remember feeling so demoralized, and just they made me feel like nothing,” she admitted. “And I went along with it because I was scared and fearful, I didn’t even really do anything.”
“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.”
Spears’ family didn’t do anything to stop the conservatorship
Spears went on to detail just how “demoralizing” it was to live as if she was a child. “You also have to understand, it was like 15 years of touring and doing shows. A d I’m 30 years old, living under my dad’s rules. And while all of this is going on, my mom’s witnessing this, my brother, my friends — they all go along with it,” she said.
“They literally killed me. They threw me away,” Spears added. “I felt like my family threw me away. I was performing for thousands of people at night in Vegas, the rush of being a performer, the laughter, the respect … I was a machine. I was a f***ing machine, not even human almost. I was insane.”
She recounted just how her father retaliated every time she went against his wishes. “I remember my dad calling me on the phone and I was crying, and I was like, ‘Why are you guys doing this?’ … and I just remember him saying, ‘You have to listen to the doctors, the doctors are going to tell you what to do, I can’t help you now.’ And I remember his last words were, ‘Now you don’t have to go [to the hospital], but if you don’t go we’re going to go to court, and there’ll be a big trial, and you’re going to lose. I have way more people on my side than you; you don’t even have a lawyer.’”
