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Fans’ calls to free Britney Spears from the legal arrangement that gives her father control over her affairs may be causing her stress; her manager points to a recent double whammy that led her to scrap lucrative Las Vegas shows. Behind her confident exterior is a woman battling long-term mental-health issues, they say. Photo: Sony Music

Amid ‘free Britney Spears’ frenzy, singer’s mental health battle and why dad keeps her in a bubble

  • When the pop star, now 37, appeared in court this month, fans demonstrated for an end to legal arrangement that gives father control over her life and finances
  • People close to Spears point to the double whammy that forced her to pull out of lucrative Las Vegas residency, and say fans don’t understand her mental state
Music

Britney Spears walked out of a Los Angeles courtroom this month wearing a red skirt, black T-shirt and no shoes. Moments earlier, in a closed hearing room with paper covering the windows, her parents and their lawyers discussed with a judge the status of Spears’ conservatorship. The court-supervised arrangement gives her father control over her US$47 million estate and personal affairs, and has been in place since Spears suffered a very public breakdown in 2008.

Outside, a group of fans hoisted signs in front of news cameras: “Free Britney” and “Human Rights Matter! End Britney’s Conservatorship!” For the second time in a decade, the personal struggles of one of the planet’s most famous pop stars have been thrust into the spotlight. But it’s different this time.

In 2007 and 2008, at the height of the Hollywood paparazzi era, Spears’ well-chronicled troubles – the rehab trips, the head-shaving incident, her umbrella-wielding assault on a photographer’s car – were often played for laughs and scorn in the media.

Today, the culture has grown more sympathetic to matters of mental health. But as social media supplants gossip blogs, and mockery is replaced by calls for support, it’s created a frenzy of fan speculation around Spears that some in her camp say may be just as detrimental.

Spears performs during a concert in Tokyo in 2017. Photo: AP

Amid reports last month that Spears, 37, checked into a mental-health facility, a #FreeBritney movement went viral – the flames fanned by a podcast that aired unverified claims she had been unwillingly forced into treatment. Diehard fans demanded the end to the pop star’s conservatorship, a call echoed by celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and Rose McGowan.

There are indications that Spears herself craves more freedom. At the hearing, she reportedly told a judge that “her father … committed her to a mental facility a month ago against her will and also forced her to take drugs”, according to news website TMZ, although, under the terms of the conservatorship, the conservator cannot do either of those things.

Sources close to the singer are pushing back on the #FreeBritney narrative, emphasising that Spears is in the conservatorship for a reason – long-term mental-health issues that they would not specify. They know #FreeBritney is born out of fans’ love for her, they say, but insist that fans don’t understand either the details of Spears’ condition nor the logistics of the legal arrangement, which is monitored closely by medical professionals and the courts.

In 2007 Spears was involved in a strange head-shaving incident. Photo: AFP

“The last thing any California state judge wants is to do something incorrectly and inappropriately, and be the subject of a story about a judge that has done something wrong by Britney Spears,” says Larry Rudolph, Spears’ manager, who is not involved in the conservatorship but has worked with her for many years. “The conservatorship is not a jail. It helps Britney make business decisions and manage her life in ways she can’t do on her own right now.”

From the outside – and even for some inside Spears’ world – the restrictions surrounding the pop star are startling. This is a celebrity who has toured the world, racked up a string of No 1 hits and platinum albums and starred in a popular four-year Las Vegas residency. Yet under the rules of the conservatorship, her father controls her finances and personal and business decisions.

This reality is difficult to reconcile with her confident, swaggering performances in so many iconic pop culture moments, from the 1999 Baby One More Time music video with her boundary-pushing jailbait-schoolgirl act, to her sensuous dance with a two-metre (seven-foot) python at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.

“She’s just a legend,” says writer Vanessa Grigoriadis, who wrote about the star’s travails for a 2008 Rolling Stone cover story. “Every generation has one massive, mass-market female pop star that people focus on. … Madonna was the ’80s into the ’90s, and Britney was the ’90s into the 2000s. For people who grew up with her, they’ll never forget her.”

Today, Spears exists in a carefully protected bubble, handlers shielding her from negative influences or hangers-on. She doesn’t have an email address, and her father has the right to sign her tax forms, revoke all powers of lawyers and “pursue opportunities related to professional commitments and activities including but not limited to performing, recording, videos, tours, TV shows and other similar activities as long as they are approved by Ms Spears’s medical team”, according to documents.

Several in the singer’s circle stress that the conservatorship was enacted in early 2008 to save her life after a mental-health crisis involving several trips to rehab and two separate admissions to hospitals for evaluation of her mental state. She lost custody of her two sons to ex-husband Kevin Federline.

He doesn’t want this to continue forever. It’s his daughter. He wants to see her happy. A functional life without any intervention like this
Larry Rudolph, Spears’ manager, on her father’s worries

And yet only about six months after she was put under a conservatorship controlled by her father, Jamie Spears, and lawyer Andrew Wallet – temporary at first, then permanent – Spears was back in the studio recording Circus, her sixth album. She performed once again at the MTV Video Music Awards. In 2009, she went on tour.

Spears has largely stayed out of trouble and out of the scandal sheets since 2008 – which has led some fans to wonder why she remains under a legal structure designed to protect the elderly and seriously ill. In response, Rudolph points to the “perfect storm” crisis that enveloped Spears in late 2018.

Doctors altered part of her prescription-drug regimen, right around the time Jamie Spears fell gravely ill with a life-threatening colon rupture requiring multiple operations – two ordeals that left the star feeling rattled and destabilised, Rudolph says.

At the time, she was preparing to launch her second Las Vegas residency. Highly distracted and struggling to adjust to a new combination of medications, she started missing rehearsals. Eventually, she told her team she didn’t think she could be ready for the scheduled opening in February.

“At some point, she called me and said, ‘I don’t think I can get this done to the level I need to get it done,’ ” Rudolph says.

Spears performs with a live python at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards in New York. Photo: Reuters

Spears announced the news on her website in early January. “This is so tough for me to say,” she wrote. “I will not be performing my new show Domination. I’ve been looking forward to this show and seeing all of you this year, so doing this breaks my heart. However, it’s important to always put your family first … and that’s the decision I had to make.”

Cancelling a Vegas residency can cost millions, so alarm bells went off for fans – particularly when it was alleged Spears’ father pulled the plug on the show when Spears stopped taking her medication.

But the media coverage of Spears in 2019 has been a dramatic pendulum-swing away from a decade ago, when reports about her breakdown were tinged with mockery and outright cruelty.

Today, while the outpouring of support for Spears may be rooted in good intentions, the hashtags, sign-waving and conspiracy theories may also be putting more stress on the singer.

Spears was unable to take up her second Las Vegas residency in February. Photo: Denise Truscello

She indicated as much in a caption to an April Instagram video: “There’s rumours, death threats to my family and my team, and just so many crazy things being said. I am trying to take a moment for myself, but everything that’s happening is just making it harder for me,” the caption read. “Don’t believe everything you read and hear.”

Meanwhile, Rudolph says, Spears’ father is as eager as any fan to see the day that she can live on her own terms.

“He doesn’t want this to continue forever,” he says. “It’s his daughter. He wants to see her happy. A functional life without any intervention like this.”

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