‘A lot of the things were planned for me to do’: Buried interview of Britney Spear’s emotional confession revealed 8 years later, details how conservatorship controlled her music

A previously unseen clip of Britney Spears discussing her conservatorship has gone viral on social media, some eight years after it was originally filmed.

The clip features Spears — who was infamously embroiled in a conservatorship in which her father, Jamie Spears, controlled her career, freedom and finances — being interviewed on The Jonathan Ross Show in 2016. While the pop star rarely discusses the conservatorship, which began in 2008 and ended amid a flurry of fan campaigning and activism in 2021, Spears gets candid about the legal matters in the resurfaced clip. 

The interview was cut out of the original broadcast of The Jonathan Ross Show in 2016, but has since aired over the weekend in the UK as part of a one-off episode titled The Jonathan Ross Show: Special Guests. Eight years ago, Spears was promoting her ninth studio album Glory but still under the conservatorship when she was asked about it by Ross in the never-before-seen interview segment. 

When quizzed on why she felt “more involved musically” in the creation of the album — which featured the singles “Slumber Party” and “Make Me” — Spears brought up the conservatorship, which at that point she had been in for eight years. “Well, just a lot of reasons,” Spears said when asked why it took so long to seize control of the album’s musical direction, “I won’t get into the whole story…”. 

Ross then went on to say that “we know a lot of the whole story” regarding Spears’ conservatorship, after which the singer opens up about how it influenced her artistry. “It was since the conservatorship,” Spears said, “and I just felt like a lot of the things were planned for me to do and being told what to do.” The comment corroborates long-running speculation that the conservatorship influenced multiple facets of Spears’ music, including the number of albums she was required to make and her agreeing to a Las Vegas residency in 2013. 

Elaborating on the newfound sense of control she had over Glory, Spears said she wanted to “make [the album] my baby, and I wanna do it myself.” The pop star added that she “was very strategic about the way I did it,” and underlined how her involvement in the project “means so much to me.” While the interview didn’t air in full back in 2016 as under her conservatorship Spears wasn’t allowed to speak about it publicly, Ross appeared supportive of the singer during the clip.

The host said the album “will really connect with people” and that Spears “seem[ed] in a really good place right now,” to which she nervously replied, “yes, sir.” Even all these years later, fans still have Spears’ back and rushed to social media to discuss the resurfaced interview clip. “I’m glad this finally got leaked,” one YouTube user wrote in response to the video, with another adding that they were “glad we’re finally able to see this part from the interview.” 

While at the time it would have marked Spears’ most frank and open discussion about the conservatorship, she has been even more candid about its impact in the years since. In her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, the pop star dove deep into the legal embroilment and its consequences, saying it “crushed my soul,” “stripped me of my womanhood” and made her feel like “a shadow of myself.” 

In other Britney news, the pop star was Paris Hilton’s muse for Halloween, was involved in a fiery accident in her home, and shared her thoughts on Sabrina Carpenter’s VMAs performance. Though a bit chaotic, Spears is finally living her life on her own terms.