Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - MINI: Tess Barker - The Britney Spears Story

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

This morning we caught up with Tess Barker. You may not know the name but you'll know the movement she started, #FreeBritney. She and her friend Babs started a podcast back in 2017, where they dove deep and humorously analysed Britney's Instagram account. However, upon further research into Britney's life and conservatorship, they realised just how much she was being controlled by her father. So we caught up with Tess about the current court case, whether she has personally spoken to Britney yet, and what we hope will happen for Britney.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now Britney Spears has been in the news a lot recently the whole world feeling a great deal of sympathy towards the pop star and her treatment over the years and a free Britney movement has started actually from a podcast called Toxic the Britney Spears story and joining us is one of the hosts of the podcast right now, Tess Barker.

Thanks so much for your time. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to have you on, Tess. You're on Zoom at the moment, and we're inside a giant department store, the wonders of technology in 2021. So cool. Hey, pick up some candles and soap for me.

I will. You just name anything and I'll grab it for you and we'll send it over, mate. Now, the reason we got you on is because you guys started a podcast I will. You just name anything and I'll grab it for you and we'll send it over, mate. Now, the reason we got you on is because you guys started a podcast about Britney Spears and you were kind of comedically analysing her Instagram account. But that very quickly turned into quite a serious cause about her conservatorship. And I understand it all sort of springboarded off a voicemail you received? Yes, sort of.

Well, when we started the podcast, it was we're both comedians. And the joke was that we were going to take her Instagram really seriously, you know, and just kind of overanalyze it for a half hour every week. But being aware of her conservatorship, even from the onset, you know, we'd look at silly things like these fashion shows she were doing and be like, where is everyone? Why isn't she leaving her house much? You know, so we were sort of starting to ask questions. And then I have a background in investigative journalism. So I had kind of just started to become suspicious about what was going on and had found some court documents kind of indicating that the people involved with her conservatorship seem to be taking, you know, more money than they should. And so we were talking

about that on the podcast and we were contacted by a whistleblower from somebody who used to work for a paralegal associated with her conservatorship who eventually let us know that Brittany had been put in a mental institution against her will and that kind of kick-started the whole Free Brittany movement. Jeez. So can

we go through, just to walk us through, because I know, as John mentioned before, we don't know as much as you and there's people probably listening right now who know even less about it, or have seen it in the news. But the conservatorship, what exactly is that? What does that mean? Yeah, so it's a legal arrangement that we have here in the United States. And in theory, you know, it has a good reason. It's supposed to be for if somebody has some kind of really serious sickness or some kind of illness where they're truly not able to take care of themselves, you know, sometimes maybe people that are quite older in the situation, et cetera, then and you don't have a family member who can take care of you. Then the court has a system in place where they can appoint someone who's going to kind of come in charge and take care of all your medical decisions and things like that.

But yeah, yeah. So that's essentially what it should be. But unfortunately here in the States, we don't really have enough safeguards to make sure that this is really only happening from people with good intentions. And that's sort of what's going on with Britney's situation. Now, we saw the news yesterday, apparently over a phone call with the court, Britney was crying, just saying she's just crying every day. She's had enough of this.

What's the latest on the court. Brittany was crying, just saying she's just crying every day. She's had enough of this. What's the latest on the court case? Well, some really big news yesterday. Brittany finally got to choose her own attorney. After 13 and a half years in this conservatorship, we know she's made multiple attempts to try to hire her own attorney. The court has told her over and over again that she lacks the legal capacity to make that decision. But finally yesterday, she got rid of the guy who's really done nothing for her for these last 13 years and brought in this really kind of rock star Hollywood, kind of take no prisoners guy yesterday. So it's a pretty optimistic day for her case. She was very happy she was off horse riding

and doing a lot of cartwheels, I saw on her Instagram as well. So she's obviously very happy with the news. Yes. And I'm also, I am 39 years old like Brittany and pulling off a cartwheel at that age. Oh, there was a lot of them. Yeah. I mean, exactly. She's a one percenter in that degree too. Oh mate, yeah.

You've got to have a lot of confidence in your cartwheeling. So what's the hope? I mean, what's the, what were, you know, because the world obviously feels a lot of sympathy to Britney Spears and her situation. What do you hope will happen from this? Yeah, through your movement. I just, I hope this process goes as quickly for her as possible.

You know, we know from the reporting that we've done around the probate court system that this goes on intentionally slowly a lot of times because the slower it goes, the more all the attorneys can get paid. So I hope that now that she's got this new guy that it goes nice and quickly for her. And then that she has, you know, the same freedoms that I really would hope for

for any human being. She should kind of live her life the way she wants to live it and spend the money that she's worked her ass off to earn. Have you spoken to her? Has she reached out to you? Not, no, I haven't. But one kind of funny thing happened

is she reposted an instagram post from our instagram page a couple weeks ago wow or a week and a half ago yeah and she tagged us on her page uh so that was and it was like a post from like two years ago she must be grateful for you you guys bringing this to the public light i guess so that was another kind of heartening thing that happened on her instagram yesterday is she made a post kind of thanking her fans and saying, you know, how grateful she was for all the support. And then she used the hashtag FreeBritney. So, yeah, it does seem that she is grateful for all the support that she's gotten. Good on you for doing this.

What a lovely thing to do and to actually follow through. And it feels like there's a lot of support. All the news footage we see outside the court, there's, you know, dozens and dozens of people. Yeah, it's very cool. And one of the Free Britney supporters yesterday tweeted a picture that it was like him and six other people at one of her early hearings. And so it's kind of a crazy thing to see how it's grown. There must have been a couple hundred people there yesterday, people from all over the country, people in Britney costumes, really, you know, beautiful signs up everywhere. So, you know, the Free Britney movement

has also started to get actual legislation changed in the U.S. government. You know, our politicians are paying attention to what's going on. So it's very surreal. Good on you. Well, if you don't mind, we'll keep in touch with you as this goes on.

Is it a weird thing to say? Oh, I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. No, sure. I guess I just get my candles and my soap from the store. Oh, yeah. Candles and soap.

Okay. That's the deal. Okay. All right. You're driving a hard bargain, Tess. I'll get you a lovely vanilla candle maybe and we'll keep in contact. Please, a nice one. Yeah.

Well, congratulations on everything that you've done so far. It really is awesome what you guys are doing. And if you want to check out the podcast, it's called Toxic, The Britney Spears Story. More info from Tess Barker and Babs Gray. Thanks so much guys.