Britney Spears fans tearful as she discusses 13-year conservatorship in previously unseen footage

Never before aired comments of Britney Spears discussing her conservatorship have made it to screens years later.

The US pop queen, 42, who was catapulted to stardom in the 1990s, was under a 13-year conservatorship until it was terminated by a judge in Los Angeles in November 2021.

Beginning in 2008, the complex legal arrangement, usually reserved for the very ill or old, had allowed the singer’s father, Jamie Spears, to control her freedom and finances.

After her conservatorship ended, Britney wrote at length in her memoir, The Woman in Me, about what she experienced.

And now, an interview she did in 2016 has been seen by fans for the first time.

Appearing on The Jonathan Ross Show eight years into the conservatorship, Britney spoke about her album Glory, released at the time and featuring the singles Make Me and Slumber Party.

Previously cut out of the televised interview, the clip in which she mentions being under the control of her father was shown by ITV this weekend on a one-off episode, The Jonathan Ross Show: Special Guests.

‘Let me ask you about the new album, because you are more involved in this musically, I understand, than previous ones,’ Jonathan began by asking her.

‘You’ve taken control, you’re more in control of your music than before?’

‘Yes,’ Britney then confirmed.

‘Why did it take you so long? Why did you wait until now to do it?’, he quizzed.

‘Well, just a lot of reasons. I won’t get into the whole story…’, Britney began.

Jonathan interjected: ‘Well, we know a lot of the whole story, so we don’t have to go over the whole story.’

‘It was since the conservatorship; I’m in a conservatorship; it’s the third year of me being under that, and I just felt like a lot of the things were planned for me to do and being told what to do,’ the pop star explained.

‘And I was like, for this [album], I wanna make it my baby, and I wanna do it myself.’

‘I was very strategic about the way I did it and that’s why it means so much to me,’ she added, receiving cheers from the studio audience.

Jonathan then praised: ‘I’m hoping it will really connect with people and I suspect it will connect with people more when they know it is coming so much from you.’

He asked her earnestly: ‘You seem in a really good place right now. Would that be a safe thing to say?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Britney replied with a smile, keeping her answer brief.

The talk show legend went on to discuss her millions-strong fanbase, reminding her that ‘millions of fans’ feel ‘protective’ over Britney and her well-being.

He asked whether she ‘draws strength from that’ or if, at times, it can feel overwhelming.

‘It’s so genuine,’ she said of her connection to her fans.

Recalling a gig she did in the capital, she shared: ‘Last night I performed and the [audiences] in Vegas are so far back, but they’re right there in front of you (in London) and it was so much more personal.

‘They weren’t drunk or high; it was so intimate. They were so present and so there with me, so it was really nice.’

Once the moment made its way to the internet, Britney fans threw their support behind her.

X user BIBLEGIRL354 wrote: ‘glory will always be my favorite britney album because it so authentically showcases her vision, her voice, her heart — my heart breaks knowing her family went to every length possible to oust her flame’.

‘I’m so happy this got to see the light of day, and it’s making me emotional’, said SlumberPartney.

‘Britney had so much courage to speak out. Her bravery and strength still inspires me to this day’, praised DannyWxo.

In Britney’s 2023 book, which had sold two million copies in the US alone as of January this year, Britney says the legal arrangement ‘stripped [her] of [her] womanhood’.

The Toxic hitmaker said she was ‘never good enough’ for her father and having him in charge of her freedom and finances made her ‘feel sick’.

Britneypenned: ‘I would do little bits of creative stuff here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. As far as my passion for singing and dancing, it was almost a joke at that point.

‘I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child-robot. I had been so infantilised that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself.

‘The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. 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.’

‘If they’d let me live my life, I know I would’ve followed my heart and come out of this the right way and worked it out,’ she added.

On her freedom, Britney admitted she’s had to ‘construct a whole different identity’ and start viewing herself as a ‘strong and confident’ woman.

Since Jamie was removed as Britney’s conservator, he has been keeping a low profile and has mostly been spotted around Louisiana.

Last year, he had a leg amputation procedure.