The Biggest Bombshell Claims from Britney Spears' Tell-All Book

Celebrity By TooFab Staff | 10/18/2023 7:57 AM PT

Britney's new book The Woman In Me marks the first time Spears herself is sharing her story, following a lifetime in the spotlight and nearly 14 years under a much-publicized conservatorship. Keep reading for all the biggest bombshells from her memoir!

1 / 31

Reflecting on the infamous 2007 MTV Video Music Awards performance, Britney said she “didn't want to" do it, but was pressured by her team to “show the world I was fine." She wrote, "The only problem with this plan: I was not fine.' She wrote she had problems with her hair extensions and costume, hadn't slept, was dizzy and said "everyone was acting like my not having six-pack abs was offensive" less than a year after giving birth to her second child. She said she ran into Justin Timberlake backstage, at a time he was “at the top of his game in every way” while she was "having a panic attack." "I hadn't rehearsed enough. I hated the way I looked. I knew it was going to be bad.” While she said she "did the best I could” and didn't go so far as to defend the performance, she wrote performers all have "bad nights." Adding insult to injury was having “one of the worst days of your life in the same exact place and time that your ex has one of his best," referring to Justin, who she wrote had a fun, free and light performance.

Getty

2 / 31

Britney says she "absolutely hated" her time as a judge on The X Factor (USA). She joined the show's second season in 2012 because she felt she "needed more direction" in her professional career. What she didn't anticipate was how anxious it would make her. "I got to where I was very, very nervous if I knew I had to be on air," she writes in her memoir, "and I didn't like being nervous all day long." She noted that she feels she used to be able to do that when she was younger, but "I feel like I age backwards when I'm afraid." She only lasted one season on the short-lived series. Now, she writes that she'd be comfortable with "a cute cameo on a fun TV show where I'm in and out in a day," but she could not "act skeptical for eight hours while judging." Meanwhile, Simon Cowell recently said he'd love to work with her again on a show like that, telling E! News she's "super smart" and has "lovely ideas about how to launch someone else's career."

Getty

3 / 31

Britney wrote that Gimme More "is by far the worst video I've ever shot in my life." She continued, "I don't like it at all - it's so tacky. It looks like we only spent three thousand dollars to shoot it." That being said, "even though it was bad," Spears wrote "it worked for what it was." She went on to call Blackout "one of the easiest and most satisfying albums I ever made."

YouTube

4 / 31

Britney didn't have great things to say about The Onyx Hotel tour, saying it was "just rough" for her. "It was too sexual, for a start. Justin [Timberlake] had embarrassed me publicly, so my rebuttal onstage was to kind of go there a little bit, too," she wrote. Calling it "absolutely horrible" and adding she "hated that entire stupid tour," Spears said she would pray about breaking a bone ... before she injured her leg filming the music video for Outrageous, bringing it to an end. "The Onyx tour was a mistake," she concluded. "I realize now that I should've sat back and taken my time getting over the breakup with Justin before I resumed touring."

Getty

5 / 31

In 2007, before she was placed under a conservatorship, Spears shocked everybody by completely shaving her head. In the book, she said of her behavior at the time: "Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back." After being put under the conservatorship, however, she said she was "made to understand that those days were now over" -- adding, "I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take." She added, Sam Asghari would later try to "make me feel better" about her head-shaving incident by calling it "a vibe" and "choice not to play in ideas of conventional beauty."

Getty

6 / 31

Shortly after shaving her head, Britney attacked a paparazzo with an umbrella in 2008. In the book, she said the photographer wouldn't leave her alone and kept asking "terrible questions." Britney writes, "Finally, I snapped. I grabbed the only thing within reach, a green umbrella, and jumped out of the car. I wasn't going to hit him, because even at my worst, I am not that kind of person." She added, "Pathetic, really. An umbrella. It was a desperate move by a desperate person." She went on to say she apologized to the photo agency.

Getty

7 / 31

Looking back at the January 2008 incident where she was taken from her home after locking herself in the bathroom with son Jayden, Britney writes, "The only thing I was guilty of was feeling desperate to keep my own children for a few more hours and to get some assurance that I wasn't going to lose them for good. Once they'd taken Jayden from me, they tied me onto a gurney and took me to the hospital." She was then placed under a conservatorship, writing, "After being held down on a gurney, I knew they could restrain my body any time they wanted to. They could've tried to kill me, I thought. I started to wonder if they did want to kill me."

Getty

8 / 31

Britney said that after Crossroads she was asked to star in Chicago, but she "didn't want to be distracted from music" and turned it down. "I look back now and I think, when it came to Chicago, I should’ve done it," she wrote, "I had power back then; I wish I’d used it more thoughtfully, been more rebellious. Chicago would have been fun. It’s all dance pieces—my favorite kind: prissy, girly follies, Pussycat Doll–like, serve-off-your-corset moves. I wish I'd taken that offer."

9 / 31

Christina Aguilera is mentioned a few times in the book, first with Britney mentioning they shared a dressing room while on Mickey Mouse Club together. Britney went on to express surprise for Aguilera saying Justin Timberlake should get back with her in a 2003 interview, considering "how negative she’d been elsewhere." Spears also said that she employed a lot of the same dancers as Christina during one tour, but while under a conservatorship she wasn't allowed to get wild. Aguilera, she wrote, "seemed pretty messed up ... It would have been nice to have drinks with them, to get rebellious, sassy, fun."

Getty

10 / 31

Reflecting on the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards -- where she memorably performed Gimme More -- Spears wrote she was "sobbing hysterically" backstage over jokes Sarah Silverman made at her expense during the show. At one point, she called Britney's kids "the most adorable mistakes you will ever see," before commenting on her anatomy.

See How Silverman Reacted to Backlash Over Her Roast in 2021 Here

Getty

11 / 31

Britney Spears called her 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer following her breakup from Justin Timberlake "completely humiliating." She writes, "I wasn't told what the questions would be ahead of time, and it turned out they were 100 percent embarrassing. I was too vulnerable then, too sensitive, to do this type of interview" -- before concluding, "I didn't owe the media details of my breakup. I shouldn't have been forced to speak on national TV, forced to cry in front of this stranger, a woman who was relentlessly going after me with harsh question after harsh question."

Getty

12 / 31

Britney expressed some frustration over a 2007 interview she did with Ryan Seacrest, criticizing the line of questioning. "It felt like that was the only thing people wanted to talk about: whether or not I was a fit mother. Not about how I'd made such a strong album while holding two babies on my hips and being pursued by dozens of dangerous men all day every day," she wrote. She expressed similar frustration over a 2006 interview with Matt Lauer, saying that instead of asking her about "what I thought it would take for the paparazzi to leave me alone," she wished "he'd ask them—so whatever it was, I could do exactly that."

Getty

13 / 31

Of her Las Vegas wedding to Jason Alexander in 2004, Britney writes the pair got "s--t faced" together. "I don't even remember that night at all, but from what I've pieced together, he and I lounged around the hotel room and stayed up late watching movies -- Mona Lisa Smile and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- then had the brilliant idea of going to A Little White Chapel at three thirty in the morning," she wrote. "People have asked me if I loved him. To be clear: he and I were not in love. I was just honestly very drunk -- and probably, in a more general sense at that time in my life, very bored," she added, saying her family "way too big a deal out of innocent fun" and "acted like I'd started World War III," before she got an annulment.

Getty

14 / 31

Britney Spears said that after Justin slept with "six or seven girls" in the weeks after their 2003 split, she had a fling with Colin Farrell. Calling it a "a two-week brawl," she describing their hookups by writing, "we were all over each other, grappling so passionately it was like we were in a street fight." She added, "As I had before when I'd felt too attached to a man, I tried to convince myself in every way that it was not a big deal, that we were just having fun, that in this case I was vulnerable because I wasn't over Justin yet." While she wrote she thought "there could be something there," she added, "The disappointments in my romantic life were just one part of how isolated I became."

Getty

15 / 31

Britney wrote that Jamie Lynn acted like a "little witch" to her mom growing up, before opening up about confronting her Zoey 101 costar Alexa Nikolas on set. "After she complained to me about a co-star of hers on her TV show, I showed up on the set to have words with the actress," wrote Spears. "What I must have looked like, hugely pregnant, yelling at a teenage (and, I would later learn, innocent) girl, 'Are you spreading rumors about my sister?' (To that young actress, I'm sorry)." She also says she found out about her sister's teen pregnancy "through the tabloids."

Getty

16 / 31

Britney writes that while in a mental facility in 2018, her sister texted her writing, "Stop fighting it… There’s nothing you can do about it, so stop fighting it." She added, "I thought they were going to try to kill me. I didn’t understand how Jamie Lynn and our father had developed such a good relationship. She knew I was reaching out to her for help and that she was dogging me. I felt like she should have taken my side." While on lithium, "they were only visiting to finish off what they’d started a few months earlier, to kill me for real."

Getty

17 / 31

Britney also criticizes her sister for releasing her own memoir Things I Should Have Said in 2021. "As I was fighting the conservatorship and receiving a lot of press attention, she was writing a book capitalizing on it. She rushed out salacious stories about me, many of them hurtful and outrageous," wrote Spears. She added, "She will always be my sister, and I love her and her beautiful family. I'm working to feel more compassion than anger toward her, and everyone who I feel has wronged me. It's not that easy."

Getty/Instagram

18 / 31

Britney Spears claims that while rehearsing with Madonna and Britney Spears before the 2003 VMAs, they did air kisses. As she reflected on her Oops! ... I Did It Again performance from 2000, she thought to herself, "I want a moment like that again this year. With the kiss, should I just go for it?" ... and then she did. "A lot was made of that kiss. Oprah asked Madonna about it. The kiss was treated as a huge cultural moment—'Britney kissing Madonna!'—and it got us both a lot of attention," she added, before saying working with the Queen of Pop taught her a lesson. "She demanded power and so she got power," she wrote, "I hoped I could find ways to do that while preserving the parts of my nice-girl identity that I wanted to keep."

Getty

19 / 31

While dating Justin Timberlake, Britney "couldn't help but notice" how she was treated by the media in comparison to him, according to excerpts published by the New York Times. "Everyone kept making strange comments about my breasts,, wanting to know whether or not I'd had plastic surgery," she wrote, adding that the criticism led her to start taking Prozac.

Read Full New York Times Takeaways Here

Getty

20 / 31

Britney said that in 2000, she learned she was pregnant with then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake's baby. "It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn't a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I'd anticipated," she wrote. "But 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." Of the abortion, she added, "I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn't want to be a father." Spears concluded, "To this day, it's one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life."

Getty

21 / 31

Britney claims that because "it was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion," they did "everything at home." Of the at-home process, Spears said, "I kept crying and sobbing until it was all over. It took hours, and I don't remember how it ended, but I do, twenty years later, remember the pain of it, and the fear."

Getty

22 / 31

Spears admits she kissed Wade Robson while dating Timberlake, who she says initiated their breakup over text message. After split, she felt she was portrayed as a "harlot who’d broken the heart of America's golden boy" — adding, "I was comatose in Louisiana and he was happily running around Hollywood."

Getty

23 / 31

Of the Diane Sawyer interview she did in 2003 following the split — which she reportedly felt forced into by her father — Britney said she "felt like I had been exploited" and "set up in front of the whole world." Jamie Spears previously denied having anything to do with the Sawyer interview.

Getty

24 / 31

Following her split from Kevin Federline, Britney said her "drug of choice" was Adderall — something she said "made me high, yes, but what I found far more appealing was that it gave me a few hours of feeling less depressed." She also said she was "never as wild as the press made it out to be" and claimed some of her eccentric behavior was from being "out of my mind with grief" following the death of her aunt, in addition to postpartum depression, the paparazzi, and her ongoing custody battle with her ex. "Flailing those weeks without my children, I lost it, over and over again," she wrote, "I didn't even really know how to take care of myself."

Getty

25 / 31

Of her conservatorship, she admitted that while she had been "Acting wild," she didn't believe she'd done anything "that justified their treating me like I was a bank robber." She said she began to think her father only saw her as a money-making opportunity, wondering why she was considered "too sick to choose my own boyfriend" but "somehow healthy enough to appear on sitcoms and morning shows, and to perform for thousands of people in a different part of the world ever week."

Getty

26 / 31

Spears claimed she lived under lockdown during her conservatorship, comparing it to being a "total monk." According to Britney, she had parental controls put on her phone and was given "prepackaged envelopes of meds" she had to take in front of security guards.

Getty

27 / 31

Of the #FreeBritney movement, she said it was the "most amazing thing I'd ever seen in my life," adding that it meant so much to her "especially in the beginning." However, watching documentaries about her life was "rough," she wrote, saying that while she believes "everyone's heart was in the right place," it hurt to see some of those in her inner circle speak out "without consulting me first."

Getty

28 / 31

Reflecting on filming the 2002 movie Crossroads alongside Zoe Saldana and Taryn Manning, Spears said the project "wasn't easy" for her. While she didn't have problems with anyone on set, she said the issues stemmed from "what acting did to my mind." "I think I started Method acting -- only I didn't know how to break out of my character. I really became this other person," she said of connecting with her role, Lucy -- adding that she "didn't have any separation at all." She wrote that she began to walk, talk and carry herself differently and was "someone else for months" while making the movie. "Living that way, being half yourself and half a fictional character, is messed up," she added, "After a while you don't know what's real anymore." Spears joked her costars must have thought she was "quirky" due to her behavior, adding that she was glad she didn't end up getting cast in The Notebook or else she would "have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night."

Getty

29 / 31

In 2008, Britney was placed under a conservatorship following a 5150 hold. Reflecting back on that time in her life, Spears said she "became a robot -- a sort of child-robot." She wrote: "I had been so infantilized 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." he also said her father and his team "having contorl over my body and my money for that long" made her "feel sick." Saying she felt like a "shadow of myself," Spears added she believes if she had been allowed to "live my life," she would have eventually "followed my heart and come out of this the right way and worked it out."

Getty

30 / 31

Britney said that while she experienced people commenting on her body since day one in the spotlight, that was nothing compared to what she allegedly got from her own father and conservator, Jamie Spears. "If I thought getting criticized about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father. He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it," she wrote. "Feeling like you're never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child. He'd drummed that message into me as a girl, and even after I'd accomplished so much, he was continuing to do that to me," she continued.

Getty

31 / 31

Calling her time on the The Mickey Mouse Club "boot camp for the entertainment industry," she said The Mouseketeers "split into our own cliques" dictated by their dressing rooms. She shared one with Christina Aguilera -- calling themselves the "younger kids" -- and said she "quickly connected with a boy named Justin Timberlake." She said her time on the show was "a kid's dream," but also "exceptionally hard work: we would run choreography thirty times in a day, trying to get every step perfect." After opening up about playing Truth or Dare and kissing Justin Timberlake at a sleepover, she said that when the show ended "part of me wanted to keep building toward the dream; the other part wanted me to live a normal life in Louisiana. For a minute, I had to let normalcy win."

Everett Collection

The Biggest Bombshell Claims from Britney Spears' Tell-All Book

Recent Photos

Every Must-See Red Carpet Look from the 2024 CMA Awards

Every Must-See Sighting from ELLE's 2024 Women in Hollywood Event

Titanic Costars Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet Reunite at Hollywood Screening of Her New Film

One Direction Stars, Family and Friends Attend Liam Payne's Funeral

Kim Kardashian Posts Rare Photo With All Four Children, Plus Kris Jenner

Los Angeles Premiere of Gladiator II Brings Big Names to Red Carpet