DISGRACELAND - Britney Spears (Pt. 2): Lithium, Las Vegas, and a Long-Awaited Emancipation

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Britney Spears’ 13-year conservatorship was an arrangement so strict and unfeeling that it left her without any control of her career, loopy on lithium, and completely silenced for the sake of seeing her sons and boyfriend. As Britney suffered in silence, she worked nearly non-stop, generating more hits — and revenue — so her father could claim his cut of the profits. But after hundreds of shows in Las Vegas and $137 million in box office sales, Britney buckled and told her conservators “no.” Then her social media went radio silent in 2019. This is the story of what came next — and how Britney Spears finally broke free.  For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ This episode was originally published on July 26, 2022. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history,

including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

Britney Spears, her troubling family ties, her reign in tabloid hungry culture, and her 13 years, as a conservate under her father, Jamie, is a story that is so complex that we required two episodes to properly tell it. If you're just getting hip to this now, I suggest you hit pause and go back to the previous episode of Discraceland, part one of the Britney Spears saga, where we discussed Brittany's unstable childhood in Louisiana, her father's reckless drinking and anger issues,

and the media-fueled meltdown that placed her under his thumb in 2008. In this episode, we get into the details of that conservatorship, an arrangement so strict and so unfeeling that it left her without any control of her career, loopy on lithium, and completely silenced for the sake of seeing her sons and boyfriend. But even during those 13 years of submission and surveillance, Britney Spears refused to stop making great music.

Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, which wasn't great music, That was a preset loop for my melotron called Neon Nightlife MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to butter by BTS. And why would I play you that specific slice of smooth side-stepping cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 23, 2021. And that was the day Britney Spears was finally allowed to address the chord about her conservatorship. after more than a dozen years of suffering in silence.

In this episode, lithium, submission, breaking the silence, and the long-awaited emancipation of Britney Spears. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is this Graceland. Britney Spears knew she would have to be fast if she wanted to get away with it. She thrust open the door to the local burger joint and held it open for her security guard. Not one she hired. No, this was a stranger.

A stranger hired a trailer at all times, hired by her father, her conservator. Six days into this conservator schick and it was already old. February 6th, 2008. Brittany flashed a smile as she held the door. You could call it Southern Charm, but today was a strategy. The guard entered the restaurant in front of her. Brittany cautiously followed. The scent of grease and sizzling patties hit her nose.

her mouth watered. After days in the hospital, all this hearty, real food made her knees weak. And then the presence of the guard looming nearby yanked her back to reality. Remember what you're here to do. Focus. Oh, yeah, right.

So Britney spun on her heel, and she flung the door back open and sprinted towards her car in the parking lot. She tossed herself into the front seat and threw that fucker in reverse, just like a woman caught in a paparazzi chase, which of course is inevitably what this little incident would turn into.

She dialed with her thumb on her clunky cell phone as she peeled off towards the highway. Her former business manager, Howard Grossman, answered her call for help. Meet him at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he said. A-Sat. Brittany banged a U-turned and steered straight for the hotel. So it had a handful of paparazzi who spotted her flying solo on the road. She could escape from her security, but she couldn't escape the onslaught of snapshots. A few more paps piled onto the daisy chain behind Brittany's black Mercedes-Benz

and then another few and then it was a dozen. By the time she turned on to Sunset Boulevard, between 1575 paparazzi cars were on the haunted behind her. Brittany couldn't give a shit, snap away, publish what you want. She had business to tend to. Brittany was beyond caring about unflattering photos now. Inside the Beverly Hills Hotel,

she and Howard reconnected over an urgent matter that could barely discuss earlier that week when she was confined to a hospital room at the UCLA Medical Center. Damn that 51-50. safety hold. Brittany needed a lawyer, a good lawyer, someone who would help her navigate a term she didn't even know existed roughly a week ago. Brittany didn't want to end this new conservatorship. She had already accepted the situation. Instead, she just wanted someone other than her father to be

in charge. Does this sound like the idea of someone with dementia-like symptoms, as Brittany's father Jamie Spears had claimed in his conservatorship paperwork only a few days prior? This is a mature, her respectful request. Brittany wasn't asking for the conservatorship to end. She just wanted someone else to be her metaphorical boss, someone she wasn't afraid of. She craved a little humanity.

She knew at this point, a different conservator was her last chance at a decent life. The timeline for her new legal arrangement had been hurried along on purpose, and Brittany never even got the chance to balk. Under normal circumstances, potential conservatives had five days

notice before a conservatorship begins. allowing them time to contest the arrangement or find their own lawyer. But Britney hadn't been granted any such time. Instead, Jamie Spears, her dad, claimed the influence of Brittany's quote-unquote life coach, Sam Lutfi, was such a threat that he needed to take over immediately. Jamie didn't just file for the temporary conservatorship over Brittany. He took it one step further. That same day, Jamie requested a restraining order against Sam.

He didn't want to see that creep within 250 yards of Brittany or her homes, her children, or her cars, even her parents' homes. Brittany's mother, Lynn, laid out the explanation in a lengthy breakdown of Sam's alleged sins. She claimed he drugged Britney, cut her home phone lines, and disabled her cars, disposed of her phone chargers. And basically, Sam Luffy, isolated and gaslit the hell out of Britney. And Lynn even stated that Sam had a plan to have Britney slip into a sleep-induced coma so a doctor could give her drugs to heal her brain. And that's a quote,

heal her brain for real. Sam already had two other strikes against them, too. Prior to infecting Brittany's life, courts granted two other people restraining orders against Sam. One was from an ex-neighbor in 2004 who Sam harassed and threatened, and the other came from a former business associate who claimed Sam often harassed her

with offensive faxes and emails, plus 15 to 30 telephone calls and hang-ups every day. All the claims suggested that Sam, was indeed a bad, bad man. The threat to Brittany's sanity, even to her life, left from the pages of Jamie's court paperwork. The judge granted the restraining order and the conservatorship on February 1, 2008,

waiving Britney's right to a five-day notice. First, they threw out her warning, and then they threw out Britney's legal representative, the one she chose, because once someone becomes a conservatee, they don't have much choice in anything, even if you're Britney Spears. And while Brittany completed her style,

day at the UCLA Medical Center earlier that week, Howard connected her with an attorney named Adam Streisand, as in cousin of Barbara. Adam spoke with Brittany about her a strange relationship with her father and her desire to have Jamie removed as conservator of her person and her estate. He heard her plea and he understood her, and he agreed to speak to the court on her behalf. And their conversation didn't matter. The court didn't care. Adam tried to explain to yet information demonstrating that Jamie wasn't a healthy fit as Brittany's conservator, and the court turned around and told them they possessed special information too, a medical report stating that Brittany didn't have the capacity to retain counsel

and have an attorney-client relationship. Instead, incredibly, the court appointed a lawyer on Brittany's behalf, a man named Sam Engel. Sam said that he chatted with Brittany over the weekend, too. He claimed she didn't understand this conservatorship arrangement one bit. And then again, maybe that's because his visit with Bruce. Brittany at the hospital was unannounced and only lasted 15 minutes. The court rejected Adam's request and rejected him as Brittany's lawyer.

Then they ejected him from the courtroom. Adam Streisand never saw that medical report. If anything, the meeting had the opposite effect on Britney's feet. The judge extended the temporary conservatorship for an additional week through February 14th pending another hearing. Brittany's life and her $40 million estate remained in Jamie's control for the indefinite future. She was trapped, caged in plain sight, 100% on display like a sideshow freak. But Brittany didn't do side shows.

She took center stage. She played the role of the ringleader. Jamie might have the power to approve who she worked with, but Britney still called the shots as a lyricist, a singer, and a creator. The world still wanted a spectacle, and Britney would give them a spectacle all right. As the tedium of life under the conservatorship wore away at her spirit in 2008, Brittany colored her world with dashes of dazzling yellows, blues, and reds.

She moved her remaining musical freedom into the big top ballooning inside her head. Britney Spears was about to bring the circus to town. Circus, her sixth studio album, dropped in late November 2008 and raked in more than half a million U.S. album sales in one week. Her eye-popping pop bizarre went platinum in just two months. And the hype around the record was so huge that the lead single, Womanizer, shot from number 96 to the movie. number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in just one week.

And maybe Brittany was a hot mess at times, but she was still Britney. She tipped her top hat to the absurdity of her long list of scandals with a dirty little ditty called If You Seek Amy. The single casually explained how all the boys and girls in the club were begging to if you seek Amy. A grammatical nightmare, if you read it literally. A parental nightmare if you read between the lines and heard Britney spelling, Fuck me on the radio.

And when such vulgar verses went to number 19, on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained on the chart for 20 weeks, it was Brittany who had the lusty last laugh. She transformed tabloid gossip into a veritable gold mine. The success of circus eventually carried Britney from country to country on a world tour, proving not even Jamie could suppress her pop prowess. But suppressing Britney's superstardom was never what Jamie wanted. Jamie wanted Britney to gain all the success in the world,

and he wanted his cut of it. two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going. And the airman. March is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction

or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Zana M'Ju. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson,

host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone.

She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that. really happened.

Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Britney Spears pressed her palms to either side of the road case and hung on for dear life. The case tilted, fumbled over bumps and probably cables taped to the floor. The vibration made her stagehills click together. There's no place like that. home she muttered to herself in the darkness. Sometimes Brittany reached for the top of the box.

Other times she gripped the chair her crew provided for her. But today, she blindly held her balance with her arms held out like she was ready to flap her wings and rocket out of the case. In 2009, Britney Spears remained in high demand, such high demand that a large road case was required to safely escort her from backstage to beneath the stage inside arenas during her circus store. Before every show, Brittany climbed into the case and perched atop the small chair inside, held that pose for however long it took to wheeler into the belly of the venue. Limbered dancer that she was, Britney could stay in the cramped position for a while. As staff whist her away, the fans that were wired into the road case provided some much-needed

ventilation. Every night, 40,000 audience members never suspected a thing. Britney practiced this awkward act for months in a row. She wasn't claustrophobic. She knew that showbiz meant frequent discomfort for the sake of a few seconds of magic on stage, but tonight was different. Tonight, fear seized every nerve in Britney's body. The air that filtered into the case

smelled pungent, earthy, trashy even, like a skunk got spooked in the backyard and sprayed the family dog. Just like the walls of the road case closed in on her, her hand. went clammy. Brittany exhaled and clamped her mouth shut, pinched her nose between her fingers for as long as she could. She frantically tried to walk fresh air inside her free hand. The case sank deeper under the stage as Brittany's lungs pleaded for oxygen. The case hit a row of cables and shuddered,

and Brittany gasped a big old inhale of fresh air. Shit. Finally, the case halted. Britney's stylus opened the door and Brittany flew out like a bad out of hell. It smells like pot. It's It smells like pot. Brittany repeated herself for emphasis. The stage crew blinked at her. Of course it smelled like pot. It was a concert venue. And who said pot anyways?

It was grass, weed, marijuana. Fans snuck joints inside every night. In hell, catching a second-hand high was part of most traditional concert experiences. Britney paced in a panic circle. Her mind and heart jittered in unison while she contemplated the consequences. She couldn't breathe in pot smoke. She'd fail her drug test. And they wouldn't let her see her boys.

Her fearful voice cracked as the tears started spilling, and the smell was down here, too. It wasn't safe. She wasn't safe. Brittany's face crumpled in despair, and then she bolted. She tumbled under the innards of the stage, skidded around corners in her stage heels, raced towards the sober safety of her dressing room,

and her stylus followed in hot pursuit. When she caught up to Brittany, she spun her around and got serious. There are 40,000 people out there waiting for you, she explained, chanting her name, ready to trip away when she cracked her prop whip, to see her prance, to see her strut around that stage. The show had to go on. Brittany didn't care about the adoration of those 40,000 people. She cared about two boys,

Sean and Jaden, her sons. And if Brittany failed a drug test from so much as eating a poppy seed muffin or inhaling secondhand smoke, her time with her boys would be reduced from limited to zero. Then again, if Brittany didn't quote-unquote behave herself and act like a gracious little conservatee, then that caused trouble for her custody arrangement too. The public had already forgotten about her conservatorship, let alone what that word even meant. That was last year's news. But in Brittany's world, the conservatorship was nearly all she could think about. It ruled her mind because it ruled her life for good.

As of October 2008, the conservatorship of her person in her estate were illegally permanent. Permanent control, permanent paranoia, a permanent nightmare. Brittany wasn't the ringleader of this circus after all. She let out a shaky sigh and surrendered. Members of her rogue crew escorted Brittany back to her designated spot under the stage. Then they dismissed her wardrobe assistant. She had seen too much. She always saw too much.

Like the way Britney bickered like a teenager with her father, Jamie, over how often she could use her cell phone, how she couldn't have sushi for dinner two nights in a row because it was deemed too expensive, how she was denied new shoes at the mall for the same reason, for the record they were a pair of sketchers. As Brittany's permanent conservator, Jamie now exercised more power than ever. The power to cancel all her credit cards to pursue new professional opportunities for Britney as long as Brittany's medical team approved. Brittany, on the other hand, didn't have the right to approve Jack if her medical team okay to consider the contract signed. Brittany never bought Jamie that boat, but she did buy him a new car, under lease with her money. Against her will, of course,

because Brittany no longer had any direct access to her finances. If Britney desired anything, it had to be approved first, clothes, food, anything, everything. If she so much as wanted $100 to purchase new books for her sons, she had a call and asked for it, it could be days before she heard back with an answer. Days for a mere $100. For books. For all this taxing work, Jamie, Brittany's dad, had Brittany, cut him a $16,000 paycheck every month, straight from Britney's bank account. He named his own price, of course. And in return, he limited Britney's allowance of her own money to $8,000 a month,

half of what he paid himself. If anything was causing the Spears' estate to dwindle, it was Jamie's pricey paydays, not California rolls two nights in a row. But the circus tour kept the cash flow consistent. After Jamie milked Brittany's stamina for 70 tour dates worldwide, she returned home to California for so much-needed R&R, which would be easy since Britney was allowed to do little more than sing dance and earn revenue.

No more days of Sam Leffey inviting paparazzi inside of the house. If anyone visited her home, Jamie knew about it. If Brittany wanted to take a spin around the gated community on a golf cart with her boyfriend, Jamie knew about that too. Even leaving the neighborhood for a quick bite to eat required a phone, call for permission. It could be minutes until Brittany got a call back. It could be hours. And if you were craving that hamburger right now, well, tough shit. You probably couldn't afford it anyways, right? Brittany was used to life under a microscope, on the street at least, not in her own house. Her reality

had flipped inside out. Before the conservatorship, her home was the only place where she could safely slip under the radar. Now, Brittany never left Jamie's radar. He hired a security team that made sure of it. Brittany knew that when security showed up every day with pills in an envelope, she had to take them immediately right then and there with the guard watching. Same routine, every day. What she didn't know was that the same guards could view her text, photos, and phone call history. All they had to do is log into an iPad with the same iCloud name and password as Britney's phone,

and boom, they had a replica of her digital life in real time. She didn't know they were ordered to encrypt certain text messages and pass them along to Jamie in secret either. The grossest surveillance sin of them all came when the security team hit a recording device and used it to capture more than 180 hours of audio without her knowledge in her bedroom. Not all that different from someone asking if you're a virgin or if your breasts are real, is it?

When Brittany was a child and things got rough at home, at least she could run to her aunt's trailer. Now she couldn't even leave the house without her father knowing precisely where she was headed with extensive means of keeping tabs on her. Circus had enticed the masses once again, and so at Fem Fatal, her 2011 album that produced Holded Against Me, Brittany's fourth career number one single on the Hot 100. It also marked a momentous occasion in her career. Brittany now had number one singles in three different decades. Her fame was on a rebound,

ricocheting off her tabloid rock bottom era of 2006 to 2008. But Brittany now dwelled in a different rock bottom, and this one didn't allow her any room to mess up, so much as inhale a whiff of weed by accident. Painfully ironic, considering her dad Jamie's liquor-laden past. But Brittany endured it, begrudgingly, strictly as a mother who loved her sons. She knew they were the only thing still worth fighting for. But she also knew that given the choice between living like this

or a life inside her special road case, she'd pick the road case. We'll be right back after this word, word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by it. a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia Clark.

When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Making karate noises.

And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the airman. is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalk. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your world? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Marone,

Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us.

I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast. podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore.

It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tate was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Britney Spears couldn't believe what she was hearing. From her spot on her therapist's plush sofa,

it sounded like a dream. Like nothing was real. Because nothing Dr. Benson was saying was real. It was all lies. Rotten bullshit piped in from wildly unreliable sources who loved to stack the odds against her. Dr. Benson gobbled it up. He received quite a few calls in the past few days, he explained. Agitated ones. Calls from folks claiming that Brittany wasn't taking her medication

that she wasn't cooperating to everyone's level of satisfaction during dance rehearsals. Bullshit. She cooperated just fine. She led those rehearsals for fuck's sake. led all 16 dancers, actually. The dance studio was the one room in her life where she could lead. Brittany knew what this was really about. This was about Las Vegas,

about saying no to a second residency, because somehow, 248 shows at the Axis Theater just hadn't been enough for Jamie Spears. Brittany's famed Piece of Me review deposited $310,000 in the bank and for each concert, almost a million dollars a week for five years straight, $137.7 million in box office sales total. Jamie took home 1.5% of that fortune,

along with a cut of Britney's merchandise sales. That's $2.1 million, if you're counting, in addition to his monthly salary of $16,000. Crunch some numbers, and over those five years, Jamie Spears raked in more than $3 million, skimmed off the top of Britney's payday, of course. But Jamie wanted more. His entire team wanted more,

and they had the legal weaponry to insure it. Brittany's co-conservator, Andrew Wallet, again, that's the guy's real name, submitted a document praising Britney's lucrative career under the conservatorship and called their arrangement a quote-unquote hybrid business model. In that same paperwork, he also happened to sneak in a request for a raise, convenient. Conservatorships were supposed to work for the conservatee for the vulnerable party, but these days, it seemed like Brittany was working for Jamie. And because Jamie could agree to business opportunities on Britney's behalf, he kept that sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. cash coming in, regardless of what Brittany had to say. Not that she ever got the chance to say it. No one asked her. If she needed to rehearse or perform on her birthday, too bad. If she had a fever of 102 directly before a performance, too bad. And as she was forced to perform a mini-tore

directly after 248 shows and she was tired, well, tough darts, pot-tart, you're on it eight. They called it the Peace of Me tour, a hastily branded extension of Britney's residency. The tour was set to jet from the U.S. to Europe over 30 dates bringing some Vegas va-v-v-v-a-v-v-un to the fat wallets who couldn't make it to Nevada. Legally, Brittany couldn't even shoot the dates down. Her current management contract blocked in her performance obligations. If Britney were to back out, her own management team could sue her. So, she took the Pissomu residency on the road and performed until there were no more pieces of herself left to give away. The tour ended on October 21st, 2018. The second Las Vegas residency was announced October 12th, nine days earlier.

They literally announced it before Brittany could wrap up her first set of shows. Zero room for rest in between residences, or family time, or hell, time to grow her family. By 2019, Brittany was eager to bring more children into the Spears household, but Jamie refused to let her see a doctor who could remove her IUD. Jamie's control went that deep. It spread to the most intimate parts of her body. The only thing drowning out the maternal tick-tick-to-boom in her mind was the rhythm of a razor-sharp dance moves. Brittany's body was long past the brink of exhaustion.

She needed a breather, a fucking break, to get out of the zone for a while before her limbs straight up fell off her body. But Vegas was heating up again. Lady Gaga relocated her ludicrous pop to the strip. Bruno Mars was swath singing brought in the big bucks with his residency over at the park theater. Calvin Harris and the chain smokers DJed through evenings of debauchery under million-dollar contracts with nightclubs. The Las Vegas residencies weren't just a sad cash grab for husbands who were too old to tour anymore. No longer a gig where old stars rot alongside the outdated hotels paint-peeling from their facade of old grandeur, once the gleaming highlights of American pop culture, and now unkempt and underwhelming.

No, Las Vegas was new again and the desert was hot. So Britney's presence there had to stay hot too. News of her second residency rocked the pop community. Flashing new billboards grace the sleaze of the strip. Another concept came into focus. Brittany, domination. Maybe the name was the final straw. Domination.

More like, dominated. Brittany was sick of the submission. Brittany said no to the name, to the residency, to the endless work without adequate rest. She said no to all of it. One little word, two of them. letters, one massive source of trouble. Someone or something, Britney's therapist chose lithium. Then things in Brittany's world slowed to a halt. Legs hurt like hell. She stretched them from

the discomfort of the foreign bed she was tucked into. She couldn't dance anymore, not here, and they wouldn't let her. For Brittany, they once meant her father and the legal team behind the conservatorship. But in recent weeks, they had swelled to include even more people, specifically the nurses at the mental health facility where she was currently living. But despite their constant presence, no one at the facility could adequately explain why she was here. Brittany traced the events again in her mind. She said no to the residency, and the doctor put her on lithium and ripped her from the comfort of her regular medications. She devolved into a sleepy, slurring mess. She apparently failed a mental health test that she didn't

even understand. And now she was here, in a small facility in Beverly Hills. For rehab? Rehab for what exactly? She was squeaky clean in every way. And she looked drunk all the time. It was only because they were pumping her full of lithium every day that kept her in a stupor. And the only benefit of the lithium loopiness was that it took the edge off her extreme lack of privacy. Nurses watched Brittany just like the paparazzi used to, except they were by her side, at her new home 24 hours a day. They watched her change, buck naked, every morning. They peered at her from the hallways, right through the empty doorframe to Brittany's room where a door should have been.

Stretching her limbs in a rehearsal studio is obviously off the table. Brittany couldn't dance, but she could sure work. Long days, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. No weekends off. Brittany didn't even know how that was illegal. She might not have been performing anymore, but her body slumped into a new kind of exhaustion. Her joints ached from sitting through meetings 10 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Her schedule was new, but her dad Jamie in the rehab facility dangled the same damn carrot in front of her. Misbehave, and you'll be missing your children. Your hunky boyfriend, too. So Brittany obeyed. Miss American Dream since she was 17, now lived a 9-5 nightmare. And for this grand luxury of working 10-hour days, seven days a week, Britney paid $60,000 every month,

$60,000 to be in a rehabilitation program when there was nothing to rehabilitate except perhaps a perceived disobedience. As one final blow to Britney's freedom, Britney didn't even have a phone. That's where Jamie Spears and the rest of the unnecessary team messed up. Because if Britney didn't have her phone, she couldn't post social media. Her Instagram and Twitter accounts went radio silent for months. Fans noticed, and they talked, posted, stirred up new conversations about the conservatorship, relearned what the hell of conservatorship was.

They learned a little empathy, too, something that was lacking in the ravenous tabloid culture of 2007 and 2008. The news exploded. Wait, this conservatorship was still a thing? Fans retweeted every article. They theorized, started podcasts, made YouTube videos. They made a hashtag, too. Free Brittany. They started a movement.

The private investigator was lucky the chant was so simple. What do we want? Free Britney. When do we want it? Now. The PI yelled along with the small circus of fans gathered on the street. She marched in step with the real protesters who carried signs that read, Britney is not your slave and free Britney, bitch.

The mole might not have had a pithy slogan to parade around, but she had the fan girl look down to a science. pink sunglasses and old circus tore t-shirt and fishnets layered under short shorts. She wasn't there to spread awareness. She was there to collect information and chatted up with the fans, hear what they were saying, which aspects of the conservatorship they were bringing up, ID them, which was easy if you swapped a few Instagram and Twitter follows. She played the role of advocate for hours,

and when the megaphone finally went silent, the PI went home and fed all the information directly to Britney Spears' dad, Jamie. Jamie claimed the secret research was conducted for Brittany's own protection against these so-called conspiracy theorists. It was, of course, for his own protection instead. What do these people want anyways? As far as Jamie was concerned, fans had won their battle. Jamie stepped down as the conservatorship of Britney's person in 2019, problem solved. Except he remained a conservator of her estate. Problem not solved. The conspiracy theorist Jamie bitched about weren't onto a conspiracy at all. They just cobbled together the truth in detail. And Britney's silence on social media

in 2019 was their tip-off. Just over a year later, a petition to release Britney from the conservatorship and netted over 134,000 signatures. The media was throwing around the word crazy and Britney Spears in the same sentence again. But unlike 2008, it wasn't that Britney was crazy. It was that Britney had been locked in a troubling situation for more than a decade now. And that was bona fide, Bad shit crazy. Jamie resorted to costly damage control and hired lawyers to advocate for the conservatorship to news channels through on-air interviews. They casually told newscasters about the supposedly great help the conservatorship offered

Brittany. The combined costs of all those lawyers' good faith was $530,000. They sent the bill to Brittany, of course. She literally forked over half a million dollars for attorneys to work against her best interests. Jamie even arranged a special natural photo opportunity for the paparazzi. He made Brittany leave a public building without security alongside her boyfriend to show just how free and normal her life was. Jamie could quell the news and he could quell the courts, but for once, what he couldn't control was his daughter's own voice. Because in 2021, the court granted her permission to speak at the next hearing.

That's right. Up until this point, Britney Spears herself, was never a part of any of these conversations. An attorney had a request that she'd be able to speak. June 23, 2021, Brittany dialed in to make the phone call that would change her life. Everyone in the courtroom held their breath, and no papers, Russell, no pens clicked. The news outlets swarming outside and patiently pressed their earpieces waiting for the scoop. Fans gathered around phones waiting for their Twitter update. For once, the world paused their pop playlist and listened to what people were.

Brittany had to say about her well-being, a courtesy offered over a decade too late, but better late than never. Brittany found her written speech, and then she spilled it all. The lithium, the lack of privacy, the IUD stuck inside her, the 10-hour workdays, the carrot dangling in front of her her children and her maternal will to do anything to see them, used to manipulate her into submission. Every detail sounded another alarm, raised another red flag about her arrangement. But what shocked the court the most was Brittany's polished presentation. She was lucid, just as lucid as she had been in 2008, 13 years ago, when she politely requested a different conservator from her father.

On an afternoon, when Brittany had every right to scream and shout, she calmly stated her case. This was a person who was capable of speaking for herself, of understanding just what she was being subject to. Within a month of the hearing, the court finally permitted Brittany to choose her own lawyer. She hired Matthew Rosinger, Hollywood's litigator of choice for celebrities and major corporations. Matthew came to court with guns blazing. He brought a petition to remove Jamie from the conservatorship. He brought documented proof that Brittany's medical team supported the removal of Jamie. The most or least surprising of all, he brought paperwork accusing Jamie of extortion,

claiming Jamie straight up asked Britney for an additional. additional to $2 million for him to leave the conservatorship. It was over. Jamie raised his white flag and packed the last of his monthly $16,000 paychecks into his suitcase. On September 29, 2021, a judge suspended Jamie from the conservatorship. Two months later, they suspended the conservatorship entirely. On November 12, 2021, the court stated that after 13 years, the conservatorship was no longer required. Funny phrasing when you consider that such a disgraceful order was probably never required in the first place.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to be a member. going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

Members can listen to every episode of disgrace land ad free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership

for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgraceland Pod Rocka Roll.

When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist They take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that

trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever.

My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction. or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Mongeau, Camilla Morone,

Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway then Elizabeth Taylor.

That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.