“This conservatorship killed my dreams,” Britney Spears writes
Britney Spears wrote two lenghty Instagram posts late Saturday calling out her father and sister, and she refused to perform on stage again until she has control over her own career. “Look I’m not gonna be performing on any stages anytime soon with my dad handling what I wear, say, do, or think,” she wrote in one post.
The two posts are the latest public comments Spears has made as she fights to end a conservatorship, which has allowed a court-appointed conservator — in this case, her father —to control her career and finances since 2008. On Wednesday, she won a major victory in court when a judge ruled she had the right to choose her own lawyer rather than a court-appointed counsel.
Spears, 39, has not performed in public since the end of 2018 at the end of her world tour and Las Vegas residency. She has claimed she was forced to work 70 hours a week in the past, and she has called the conservatorship abusive in court. The financial group Bessemer Trust resigned as co-conservator following Spears’ testimony against the legal arrangement in June, Jamie Spears remained the sole conservator of Spears’ estate.
In the first post on Saturday, Spears wrote “There’s nothing worse than when the people closest to you who never showed up for you post things in regard to your situation whatever it may be and speak righteously for support.”
Spears continued “how dare the people you love the most say anything at all … did they even put a hand out to even lift me up at the TIME !!!??? How dare you make it public that NOW you CARE … did you put your hand out when I was drowning ???”
While she didn’t name anyone directly, fans speculated she was talking her sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, who first spoke publicly about the conservatorship in June. “Maybe I didn’t support her the way the public would like me to with a hashtag on a public platform, but I can assure you that I’ve supported my sister long before there was a hashtag, and I’ll support her long after,” Jamie Lynn said on her Instagram Stories, according to Vulture. “Not that I owe the public anything, because my sister knows I love and support her.”
In her second post, Spears directly called out her sister, writing “I don’t like that my sister showed up at an awards show and performed MY SONGS to remixes! !!!!” Jamie Lynn Spears performed a remix of Spears’ song at the 2017 Radio Free Disney Awards, which honored Spears that year with an Icon Award and featured several tribute performances.
“My so-called support system hurt me deeply !!!!” Spears continued in her post on Saturday night. “This conservatorship killed my dreams … so all I have is hope and hope is the only thing in this world that is very hard to kill … yet people still try !!!! I didn’t like the way the documentaries bring up humiliating moments from the past … I’m way past all that and have been for a long time !!!!”
Although Spears had been fighting for years to end the conservatorship, a 2021 documentary “Framing Britney Spears,” which was nominated last week for two Emmys, pushed the legal arrangement back into the public eye. Spears didn’t speak publicly about the conservatorship until recently, and earlier this week, she used the #FreeBritney hashtag for the first time.
Zoe Christen Jones and Justin Carissimo contributed to this report.