Britney Spears is opening up in a new interview, her first in years, about her anticipated tell-all and becoming her own woman after being freed from her 13-year conservatorship.
The pop star’s anticipated new memoir, “The Woman in Me,” is set to debut on Oct. 24, and excerpts from the book were released on Tuesday via People.
In a shocking revelation, Spears, 41, claimed in her memoir that she became pregnant during her relationship with Justin Timberlake and had an abortion.
“Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she wrote, according to the outlet.
Spears and Timberlake dated from 1999 until 2002 in their early adult years. In an accompanying new interview done via email with People, Spears discussed how she is handling her “new freedom” in the wake of the nearly 14-year-long conservatorship under her father, Jamie Spears, 71, which a Los Angeles County judge terminated in November 2021.
As her relationships have evolved with her family, including her dad, mom Lynne Spears, 68, and sister Jamie Lynn Spears, 32, and model and actor Sam Asghari, 29, with whom she split in August after 14 months of marriage, Spears told People life after the conservatorship has its difficulties.
“Learning this new freedom, I’ll admit, is challenging at times,” the “Gimme More” singer said. But in releasing her memoir, she tells people she is “finally free” to tell her story.
“Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,” she said. “It is finally time for me to raise my voice and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me. No more conspiracy, no more lies — just me owning my past, present and future.”
Spears has accused her father and others of exploitation and abuse under the conservatorship, detailing in the memoir how she was made to feel like “a sort of child-robot” and a “shadow” of herself.
“The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child,” the “Womanizer” singer writes in the excerpt of the memoir shared with People. “I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
Delving further into the past, Spears writes of her casting on the Mickey Mouse Club at 11 with Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling, including how the cast would “run choreography thirty times in a day” and how she kissed castmate Timberlake at a sleepover.
“At a sleepover, we played Truth or Dare, and someone dared Justin to kiss me,” Spears writes. “A Janet Jackson song was playing in the background as he leaned in and kissed me.”
Spears also details how her first movie role in the 2002 year drama-comedy film “Crossroads” caused her to inadvertently fall into method acting.
“I ended up walking differently, carrying myself differently, talking differently. I was someone else for months while I filmed ‘Crossroads,'” the “Oops!…I Did It Again” singer writes.
Getting too deep into a character made her “glad” she didn’t get the role of Allie Hamilton in “The Notebook” opposite Gosling, which ended up going to Rachel McAdams.
“That was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career, and I was relieved,” she continued. “‘The Notebook’ casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it.”
Spears also talked about growing up in Louisiana, her work ethic as a child star, getting a record deal at Jive Records at 15, and her infamous 2001 VMA performance of “I’m a Slave 4 U.”
The “snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now,” she writes. “Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God.”
The excerpts also include her thoughts on becoming a tabloid fixture in the early 2000s, the harm it caused, the termination of her conservatorship, and how she hopes telling her story inspires others.
“Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back,” Spears writes.
“The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time,” she said. “I felt like I was being deprived of those good secrets of life — those fundamental supposed sins of indulgence and adventure that make us human.
“It took a long time and a lot of work for me to feel ready to tell my story,” she said. “I hope it inspires people on some level and can touch hearts.”
“The Woman in Me” will be released on Oct. 24 by Gallery Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint.
Spears previously co-authored the 2000 autobiography “Britney Spears’ Heart to Heart,” and the 2001 young adult novel “A Mother’s Gift” with her mother, Lynne Spears, both of which appeared on the USA TODAY Best-Selling books list.
In other news – DC Young Fly mourns sister’s death
DC Young Fly is mourning another loved one. The Celebrity Squares host, 31, announced the death of his sister in an Instagram post on Monday. The news comes months after his longtime partner, Jacky Oh, died at age 32.
“In a matter of a year I lost 3 people☹️ my Kuzzin on last august my girl in may and my sister a couple days ago🤦🏽♂️.. u jus gotta stick through the mission knowin that GOD got u and he will grant you the strength….,” he wrote. Read More
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