BONUS Britney Spears Book Club with Eve Lindley

Celebrity correspondent Eve Lindley came by to tell us about Britney Spears' memoir The Woman in Me. This is part one of a four-part saga we're currently releasing on Patreon and Apple Plus, and in this episode we get into Britney's family history, her childhood, her years of searching for stardom, and her life until the eve of "...Baby One More Time."

*A content warning—in this episode we talk about mental health struggles, and a part of the story around minute 22 involves suicide.

Eve Lindley on Instagram.

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Transcript

Sarah: She's like, in my normal life as a non-child actor, you just get drunk with your mom, and go to a school founded by white supremacists, and are put in the stocks by your parents to have tomatoes thrown at you. And, it's all great.

Welcome to You’re Wrong About, the podcast where sometimes we talk about celebrity memoirs. And today we are talking about Britney Spears with Eve Lindley. This is part one of our four-part saga on Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me. You can listen to Part 2 on Patreon and Apple+ right now. Part 3 is coming out in a couple of weeks, and Part 4 will be out in May.

In this episode, Eve and I talk about Britney's early life. And we do have a content warning for the conversation getting into the topic of suicide around 22 minutes, as part of Britney's family history. If this isn't the right episode or the right part of the episode for you, know that we care for you, we're here with you, and we are all here together with Britney. Thank you so much for listening.

Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where sometimes we do a little celebrity book club. And sometimes that little celebrity book is by Britney Spears. Sometimes the other celebrity is Eve Lindley. Hello. 

Eve: Hello, Sarah Marshall. How are you? 

Sarah: I'm really, I'm very excited about this. Because this book came out, I'm not against reading it. I guess my brain is just so tired. So I'm really happy to just have you gently spoon feed this book to me like Samantha did with Carrie with that yogurt in the Sex in the cCty movie. 

Eve: Yeah, I'll give you a little wink. Caroline O'Donoghue says that everyone is born under a diva star. And I would say we're all born under multiple diva stars, because I love Judy, I love Cher. But my first diva was Britney. Sometimes I don't even think of her as a diva, because I think a diva, there's a lot of control that a diva has over herself and those around her. And I think when we talk about the Britney story, control is a big theme in the book, and it's a big theme in Britney's career and work.

So yeah, sometimes I struggle to call her a diva, but she is a female performer who I resonated with kind of out of the gate. And I'm excited to talk about her in her own words. Because it's so hard to do one of these about somebody who has passed or somebody who hasn't told their own story. Because you're here being like, what's important and what should I emphasize? What shouldn't I emphasize? And I feel good about not being tasked with that. 

Sarah: Yeah, so Britney is the biggest topic possible. Do you want to talk about the history of the USSR, or do you want to talk about Britney? I'm like, I don't know. They're equally complicated. 

Eve: But only one of them is blonde and hot.

Sarah: Debatable. So I'd love for you to bring us up to speed in terms of who is Britney? Because it feels like the past few years of our conversation about her have been dominated by, as far as I can tell, the public really realizing to some extent that we almost killed her for fun. And then the conservatorship thing.

Eve: Britney Spears was a recording artist in the late 90s, early 2000s. She was known as the pop princess. There was people who mimicked her and copied her, and all the record companies tried to have their own version of her.

Sarah: Yeah. And then Christina Aguilera, I feel like, had to be branded as a Britney copycat and she was like, I’m my own person!

Eve: That was a little Cher, actually. 

Sarah: That was Cher, that was my Cher. 

Eve: All of your impressions are jst Cher.

Sarah: You know, that's my secret, and it's gotten me this far.

Eve: You're going to do Sling Blade, but it's just like, “Whooooa!”

Sarah: I love that. Yeah, that'll be my one woman show, Woman of a Thousand Voice, “Four score and seven years ago…” 

My first memory of Britney Spears is, I remember …Baby One More Time came out when I was 10 years old. It was in 1998. 

Eve: September. 

Sarah: Oh my God. Yeah, that feels true. I feel like I can feel September in that memory. And weirdly, Britney Spears is a core unforgettable memory for me. Because I remember my best friend at the time's little sister showing us her CD being like, have you heard of Britney Spears or like seeing the Britney Spears something? And I was like, is she that really young one? Because she was, I believe, 16 at the time, and I was 10, and I was just like six years is not that many years. I was very conscious of the fact. And then my mom showed up at the door with a puppy because we'd been looking for a puppy.

So it's like Britney Spears, the most ecstatic memory I'd ever had to that point, of my mom showing up out of nowhere with a puppy. And I've always, I don't know, felt very attached to her, that period for her before everything happened the way it did. 

Eve: So the song came out in September, and then the album came out in January of ‘99. And get this, the album came out on my birthday. So how's that for cutting edge journalism? 

Sarah: Look, you had a birthday, I got a puppy. It's proof that we're meant to be here talking about Britney today. 

Eve: Absolutely, yeah. I similarly remember, I'm the youngest of three, and my oldest sister is nine years older than me, so I was five years old. And my sister was 14, so she was watching TRL, and we had this basement that was finished with the TV room in it. And I remember coming down the stairs and hearing …Baby One More Time, and looking at the TV and seeing this girl in the pigtails and the tied-up knotted white button up and the little skirt. My brain exploded. 

I was just like, who is that? How do I become her? And talk about control, something about the way that she moves. For a five-year-old who's learning how to be in their body, each finger, each joint articulation was so controlled. Part of her thing is dancing. And as we'll see, that's not by accident. And she just looked so in control of herself to me. I had never seen somebody so good at being in a body, so at ease in their own body. That wasn't always the case for her, but that's what it looked like. And that's, to me, what was so compelling. 

Sarah: Yeah, and I remember that video so well. And it's many things, but one of those things is a gross, old man fantasy of the sexy school girl. And this video, it just feels hard to overemphasize just how apparent it was from the beginning that she was huge. 

Eve: There's no such thing as an overnight success. But because of the magnitude of what Britney was, and then what she became in mere months, it's hard not to use that term. And that is also why I'm like, how the fuck do you grapple with that? She’s from Louisiana, she's not from a big city. She truly came out of nowhere and wowed people. 

Sarah: And a point that, I forget who made this, but on an episode of Sentimental Garbage, where Caroline and Dolly Alderton were talking about Robbie Williams. Did you listen to that one? 

Eve: I did. Yeah. 

Sarah: And I think the whole Nepo baby conversation is, there's a lot of different things happening. And there's a lot of different conversations. But the point they made that I hadn't thought of is you look at somebody like Billie Eilish, whose parents are in the industry, and you don't actually want a very young person to become very famous and have parents who are just like, work at a Toyota dealership in Lafayette or something. 

Eve: Yeah. 

Sarah: Because then they're going to be wowed, and they're going to be knocked off their feet, and they won't know how the industry works. And you can't have every famous child have a parent who's a producer. Should we have famous children? I don't know. No one cares what I say anyway, so it doesn't matter to me. 

The very persuasive point there is that fully grown adults are just as at sea in the entertainment industry as their children are most of the time. If it's not a world that you're already a part of, it can be naturally extremely hard to navigate.

Eve: Yeah. I feel like it's, well my dad is a pilot, and his dad before him was a pilot. And his brother's a pilot. I don't think nepotism works the same way in aviation necessarily, because there's so much protocol and you can't just be like a mediocre pilot to become one.

Sarah: I hope not. 

Eve: But the point is, my dad knew what to expect, knew what the protocol would be. Nobody in my family is pursuing entertainment, so sometimes things happen to me and I'm like, I had no idea that this was going to be a thing. And it's tough. So the argument to me, feel however you want to feel about nepotism. Yeah, I agree that certainly in Brittany's case, her mother, her father, they didn't know this world. It wasn't like old hat normal for them. And I think it really ruined the family. Spoiler alert, it caused a lot of grief to the family. So let's get into the book.

Sarah: Let's get into it. Yeah. Where do we, how do we begin to serve this banquet? 

Eve: So The Woman in Me by Britney Spears is a book. 

Sarah: It's about pegging. Sorry. 

Eve: That is funny. Oh my god, I never put that together. 

Sarah: Thank you. That's my first thought. 

Eve: It does have a very trans connotation to it. The Woman in Me. But, I like that you're feeling pegging.

Sarah: There's just so many possibilities with that title. 

Eve: Absolutely. It's a line from her song, I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman, where she says, “I'm just trying to find the woman in me.” 

Sarah: Oh, Britney. 

Eve: That's from her third album, which is the unofficial soundtrack to the movie, Crossroads. Plug. 

Sarah: Which we will be discussing on You Are Good. Probably which will be out before this one is out. So if you're listening to this now, it's probably out right now. 

Eve: So go find it. So The Woman in Me was published on October 24th, 2023 by Gallery Books, which is a division of Simon Schuster. It became a #1 New York Times bestseller in the first week of its release. And as of this month, it has sold over 2 million copies in the US, with an estimated 3 million copies in print globally. Good for you, Brit.

Sarah: And I know that there is, for anyone who hasn't been steeped in this, the dynamic for the past few years has been that Britney was under this conservatorship where there was some debate about. Because some people were like, she can't do anything. It's terrible. Her human rights are being violated. And other people were like, it's fine. 

And then I think it did become, we'll get to this, but I think it did become unambiguous that it wasn't fine. And so to me there's a sort of excitement as well to this idea of Britney in her own words, which is something that we didn't actually get to have for a really long time. Or really ever, in a way. Because if you're a teen pop star, and also in a time before you can express yourself on social media, then you're more effectively muzzled than almost anyone I can think of. 

Eve: Yeah. In classic Britney fashion, she announced her book on Instagram, of course. And used a lot of emojis, a lot of exclamation points. Basically, her sister, Jamie Lynn, announced a book. And then a little while after that, it was announced that Britney signed some massive deal. I think it was a $15 million dollar book deal. And then the Instagram post was, “I want to address my recent post captioning my past to my understanding. To most, it's confusing.

Why express it now?” (shrug emoji) “I'm writing a (book emoji) at the moment and it's actually healing and therapeutic. It's also hard bringing up past events in my life I've never been able to express openly!!! I can only imagine that I do sound childish, but I was extremely young when those events took place. And addressing it now, I'm sure it seems irrelevant to most, and I'm completely aware of that. But instead of using my heart (heart emoji) I'm using the intellectual approach, as Justin so respectfully did when he apologized to Janet and me. Although he was never bullied or threatened by his family, he took the opportunity to apologize 20 years later!” 

Sarah: Oh wow. There's a lot happening in there.

Eve: There's a lot happening. If you know Britney's Instagram, sometimes it's hard to follow, and she's really just scorching the earth sometimes. He took the opportunity to apologize 20 years later!!! three exclamation points. Timing is everything!!! Three exclamation points. Good timing is the bitch!!! Three exclamation points. 

Sarah: Good timing is the bitch. 

Eve: “Anyway, I wanted to just let people know I care, and I'm so sorry. My mom and sister also did the “intellectual approach” (in quotes) in indulgence, by writing their own books, as I couldn't even get a cup of coffee, or drive my car, or really anything. I'm not the type of person to bring up uncomfortable conversations because it's not respectful. (shrug emoji) But come on, let's actually talk about it!!! three exclamation points. When I was younger, there was more of a playful and light approach to everything. It was easy not taking yourself so seriously. Yet in this business, I will just say it, I was indeed treated less than.

And it goes on and on. But she is referencing Jamie Lynn's book and then her mother's book, which is called, Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World, which came out in 2008. 

Sarah: Oh, wow. Wow. 

Eve: Yeah, just when the conservatorship started. Now when I first heard about this book, I was like, how is Britney going to write a book? It's just so much work to write a book. And there are people who have been writing for years who can barely get through it. And when I read it, I was like, this feels like it's in her voice. But it is speculated that there was a ghostwriter named Sam Lansky, and I don't take any umbrage with that. I think Britney's got a lot going on, and she might have needed help writing the book. And that's totally cool 

Sarah: I mean, look. I am a writer, and I can't write a goddamn book, right? Nor do I particularly want to. And I don't know, it feels like maybe we used to be more… I don't know what I think. I feel like you used to see ghostwriters credited on the cover more often. Maybe not. I don't know. 

Eve: Like ‘Britney Spears with Sam Lansky’. 

Sarah: Yeah, the ‘with’. Yeah. And we all knew what the ‘with’ meant. Or in magazines where they would be, “as told to”. Like those Cosmo articles where you were like diet culture, weird sex tip, “My husband died on our wedding day” as told to…

And yeah, it feels like there's been discourse lately about the ethics of having a ghostwriter, and I'm not up to speed on all of that. But I really think that ghostwriters exist for a reason. And I don't expect people like Prince Harry to know how to write, because they didn't learn how to write. Some people are famous for other things and also learn how to write. 

Eve: Britney was busy. 

Sarah: Britney was busy! Britney was being worked to death. 

Eve: Yeah, she had a lot on her plate. And she just never learned how to write a book. That's totally fine. 

Sarah: It's really okay. Yeah. And ghostwriters are great at what they do for a reason.

Eve: He put it in her voice, it doesn't feel like, who is this robot telling this story? Which I think is actually a talent. 

Sarah: Oh my God. Yeah. That's amazing when people can do that. 

Eve: He has written for many things, and he recently did the Taylor Swift Time profile when she was person of the year. So he's doing good, and he knows how to write about our blonde gals.

In the book, there's a lot of like themes of, as I said before, control. And then there's this ongoing thing about Britney being a child versus being a woman, which is really interesting. So much of the Britney Spears thing at first was the Lolita thing. And once again, the issues of being a child who looks like a woman, and then later on during the conservatorship, being a woman who has the rights of a child. So there's a lot of that.

But it starts in her childhood in Louisiana. And she talks a lot about being a young, Southern, Christian girl, and what's expected of her following the rules, going to a Christian school. And there's a lot of talk of God. She was raised Christian. She passes into other religions at certain points in her life, but she definitely had a strong Christian upbringing. And Kentwood, as we said before, is an extremely small town. Everybody knows everybody. People don't lock their doors. It's very idyllic in that way. 

It's hard to nail down if she was middle class or working class sometimes. And I think maybe it changed over the course of her childhood. Because she talks about having a housekeeper at some points. But then she also talks about possibly losing everything and being the sole breadwinner in her family. And that was interesting to me. 

But there's this story she tells about the first time that she understands music. And her housekeeper was in the laundry room singing. And the housekeeper was singing gospel music. And it changed her. It was this huge awakening for her. She got shivers down her spine, and she realized and decided that singing was magic, and music was magic. And to her it was like passing out of the real world and communicating on another level.

She gets really into Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, and music becomes her way of communicating. And it's interesting because she has this thing that happens when she's a kid, where she starts hiding in cabinets. And everyone in her family is like, where's Britney? What cabinet is she hiding in? And when she sings, she like wants to be perceived. And then the rest of the time, she is hiding in cabinets. 

Sarah: I really identify with that. I need a cabinet right now. That's what my house is missing. 

Eve: Yeah, a huge… I know. I need a me sized cabinet. And this is a thing that I think continues on in some ways for the rest of her life. Like oscillating between this sort of extremely extroverted performance side, and then being so socially anxious that she doesn't want to leave the house or whatever. 

So Britney says tragedy runs in her family. Her name is Britney Jean Spears. And she's named after her father's mother, who lost a baby, gave birth to a baby who died at three days old, and fell into a deep depression. And her father's father, the husband of this woman, sent her to Southeast Louisiana Hospital. Which Britney calls by all accounts, “a horrible asylum” in Mandeville, where she was put on lithium. And we're going to want to remember the lithium thing and the mental hospital thing. And people say that Britney looks a lot like Jean.

Sarah: Yeah, and it's interesting to think of this as many things, but also a family story. And maybe a family dealing not very well with a legacy of mental illness. 

Eve: Yeah, I think it is a family story. I think most of our stories are family stories, whether we like it or not. But in this case, it's all so symmetrical, unfortunately. 

So after this, in 1966, Jean is 31 years old. And she lays herself down on the grave of her infant son and she shoots herself. And it's something like eight years after his death. And Britney's father, Jamie, is 13 when Jean does this. 

Sarah: And is this his mother? 

Eve: This is his mother, yes. 

Sarah: Oh boy. 

Eve: Yeah. Jamie Spears, Britney's father, is more often than not the villain in the story. But I think we all know that hurt people, hurt people. 

Sarah: Yeah, that's really what Succession was about.

Eve: So yes, so that is her father's childhood. Her father's father then gets a second wife, who he also puts in a mental hospital, which is interesting. 

Sarah: That does establish a pattern. 

Eve: So yeah, two is not a lot, but it's definitely a pattern. 

Sarah: It's more than most people have. 

Eve: Exactly. So that is Jamie Spears's childhood. And then there is Britney's mother, Lynn, who is English and whose mother was from an elegant, high society family in London. And then during World War II, Lynn's mother met an American soldier and went with him to America. 

Sarah: Just like Vicky Morgan's mother. Oh my god! Bimbo Summit! And also, and I forget how this worked for the Cattrall family, but Britney and Kim Cattrall are both secretly British, which I love.

Eve: Yeah I don't know if you remember, but in the 2000s, when the paparazzi were chasing her, one of the reasons why everyone was like, she's crazy, is because she would talk in a British accent. There is video of her literally in a gas station, walking in and being like, “Excuse me, where's the loo?” Like, it was a thing. And then even in she does a song with Will.i.am where she's speaking in a British accent. It's called, Scream and Shout. 

Sarah: I think we should encourage more celebrities to speak in a British accent for no reason. It's really Seems like a victimless crime. 

Eve: Absolutely. Well listen to this. She says, “All I knew was that my grandmother was beautiful, and I loved copying her British accent. Talking in a British accent has always made me happy because it makes me think of her, my fashionable grandmother. I wanted to have manners and a lilting voice just like hers.” So it's in context, there's nothing crazy about that.

Sarah: Yeah. It's interesting that we're like, “Hey, you don't really talk like that. You're pretending to talk like that.” Like our need to feel like we're getting the authentic package, or at least to be tricked into feeling that, is interesting. 

Eve: Yeah. And on some level, I do accents all the time. I'll just be talking to anybody, and I'll be like, let me tell you.

So I'll start, like whatever. And to me, I don't know. Maybe there's something to be said about how doing an accent takes you out of the moment and takes you out of the responsibility of what you're about to say or something. But what could be more authentic than me basically telling you, I don't want to say this so I'm going to create some other person to say it. 

Sarah: So maybe Oliver Twist can say it, gov’nah. 

Eve: Exactly. You start to talk like the things around you. So in Madonna's case, if she's living in London, of course she's going to develop an accent, right?

Sarah: That is the thing. And that different people have different levels of susceptibility to that. I have a friend from South Carolina, and we had lunch recently. And at the end of two hours, I was noticing myself picking up speech patterns subconsciously. I think voice is very transmissible. 

Eve: Yeah, I agree. 

Sarah: Anyway, good for her. 

Eve: Anyway, love her. Okay, so Britney's mom, Lynn, is very cool because she's got the influence of London in her, like she comes from a city. She's the city mouse, so to speak. And she wears short skirts and has an edgy haircut. And she hangs out with, Britney says, “She hung out with the gay guys in town who gave her rides on their motorcycles.” I just love that. Because how many gay guys were there really at the time? 

Sarah: Right? Three. 

Eve: And they were all riding motorcycles, I guess. They were in a gang. Yeah, they were in a gay gang. 

So then her parents meet, they get together. Let me tell you, between you and me, Sarah Marshall, I read a lot of memoirs. My least favorite part of the memoir is the childhood, because there's only been one memoir where I've been like, I love the time before you became famous. And that was Elvira's memoir. And I would say Britney's also was compelling to me. And how her father was this tragic country mouse, and her mother was this cool city mouse. 

Sarah: Yeah, and how did they meet? 

Eve: Apparently, she saw him play basketball. After his mother died, he threw himself into sports in a very major way. And people would drive from other towns to go watch him play basketball. 

Sarah: Wow. There's really nothing to do in the 70s.

Eve: It's true. It's true. You couldn't even just go watch a video of your favorite… like you had records, and then you had local sports, and that was it. And the gay guys in town. 

Sarah: Yeah, you had gay guys on motorcycles. That was it. And the carnival, occasionally. 

Eve: And this is something that, my parents, my biological parents divorced long before I remember. And I recently had my dad here in town. And I'm closer with my dad than with my mom. And something that I've always appreciated is that my dad will say that they came together in a pure way. They didn't always hate each other, there was love at the beginning. And Britney talks about how their relationship was born of a mutual attraction and a sense of adventure.

And then she says the honeymoon period was over long before I came. So they get married when the mother is 21, Lynn is 21, and Jamie is 23. In 1977, they have Brittany's older brother, Brian, and pretty quickly the dad falls into alcoholism. He works as a welder, and he disappears for days at a time.

Lynn is left with this baby, and that goes on for a little while. And then at a Christmas party, when Brian is a toddler, Jamie gets very belligerent on Christmas morning, the day after a big Christmas party, and Lynn files for divorce. This is 1980, so he's three. And then Jamie's father, the one who put both of his wives in insane asylums, begs Lynn not to go through with the divorce.

Sarah: Oh, he does have very good judgment. 

Eve: So yes, he obviously is somebody to trust. And he's very pure of heart. And this much we know. So Lynn doesn't, amazingly. And that is why Britney Spears is born, because she doesn't go through with that divorce. 

Sarah: Don't you find it, I feel like we hear less of this now, but I feel like in the 90s and secular media, it was still very common to be like, the divorce rate's going up and that's bad. And it's like, why is it bad that more people feel empowered to get out of marriages where they are unhappy and potentially being abused. 

Eve: I always think of Samantha Jones, Kim Cattrall, who says, “You get married, you hope for the best. If it doesn't work out, you get a divorce.” And it's like, why is that so tough for us? We think of them as failed marriages. I don't think of any relationship I've ever had that didn't go on for years and years as a failure. It was important. I learned something. I got something out of it.

Even if a relationship ends after one night, you theoretically can get something out of it. And as we'll see later on, Britney is admonished for not respecting the sanctity of marriage and all of that. 

Sarah: Oh, brother. 

Eve: Get ready, babe. Things are going off. 

Sarah: So they say, as many great minds have, including Jack Donaghy in that episode of 30 Rock, maybe everything will calm down if we have a baby.

Eve: Exactly. So they don't get divorced. And as I said, he was very serious about athletics, Jamie, so he opens a gym business. And they start doing really well from this gym business, and they start having these big backyard crawfish boils. They become a wealthy family in town, they move into a bigger house. And then on December 2nd, 1981, a day that will live on in infamy, we are blessed with Britney Jean Spears. Her mother is in labor for 21 hours. 

Sarah: Yeah, 21 hours of anything is not easy, really, when you think about it. If someone were to feed me grapes for 21 hours, I would vomit and lose my mind at a certain point if Jack Black himself were to feed me grapes. 

Eve: I love the idea of you and Jack Black in a grape eating tableau, though, I will say.

Sarah: Yeah, me too. Can somebody do fan art of that? 

Eve: Okay, here's an interesting thing. When Britney's in the conservatorship, I know I'm jumping around here, but when Britney's in the conservatorship, one of her main things is she wants to drive her car. Britney loves driving. She drove a lot during the paparazzi sort of frenzy around her.

She ran over a paparazzi's foot, which was totally understandable because of the way they were crowding her. But in her childhood, she is in two car accidents. And then her brother Brian is in a four-wheeler ATV huge accident, that gets him in a full body cast. So there's all of these automobile accidents in her childhood. She's in one with her grandmother, she's in one with her mother. And three big accidents feels just like more than the norm to me. 

Sarah: Maybe there are really bad roads where she grew up. I don't know, but it's interesting though. And regardless of why, it's yeah, I like knowing that about her.

Eve: Yeah, it feels notable. So she starts taking gymnastics classes. Which, thank God. At career day in elementary school, she says that she wants to be a lawyer. And then her teachers say, no, you're Broadway bound and you're the entertainer. And they don't let her choose being a lawyer. Isn't that crazy?

Sarah: It is a bit. It's also so weird for teachers to encourage an interest in the performing arts, honestly. 

Eve: I know! It's in a way, it's like everyone around her was like, you've got the thing. So, yes. And at that point, she is taking gymnastics classes. She's taking dance classes three times a week. She's singing in church choir, and she sings a big solo for a Christmas concert. She sings, What Child is This? She's hiding in cabinets and then she's singing Christmas solos. 

And that push and pull continues and continues. Her father is still drinking very heavily. His business was doing well it seems for most of her childhood. Well enough that they had a housekeeper, as I said, and then he would drink and disappear for several days.

She has this really amazing part that actually made me get really teary when I first read it. And it's basically where she talks about the type of dad that she wanted. And she says, “The saddest part to me was that what I always wanted was a dad who would love me as I was. Somebody who would say, “I just love you. You could do anything right now, and I'd still love you with unconditional love’.” And I just think that's so honest. And it feels like her dad, with all of his kids, she talks about how her brother, her dad really pushed him to be the best at sports. The way that he was when he was younger, the type of dad who's if you're going to do something, you have to be the best at it. If you're going to do gymnastics. You have to be doing it seriously and in a way that you're going to pursue this as a profession. There was no hobby. There was no, wouldn't it be fun to paint a picture? It's no, you're creating art for your portfolio. That kind of parent, which I think on one hand, those types of parents are known to produce stars or whatever. 

So her dad is not warm and fuzzy, and he's really pushing his children a lot, and quite abusive to the mother. They would argue all night long and he would go away for days at a time. And Britney says that, “To be honest, it was a kindness to us when he went away. I preferred when he wasn't there.” Which is so sad. 

Sarah: Yeah. I loved it when my dad wasn't around. Because he was, I don't know. I think that there's, in my experience, this kind of ongoing psychic load of being in a household with somebody who can be very nice, and sometimes is. So that when they are, you feel like you have to keep performing so they'll keep doing it. And then when it breaks inevitably, and they attack you for no reason, whether it's verbally or physically or however else, then you feel more responsible for it. And I remember this feeling of peace when he was away. 

Eve: Yeah. That makes sense. My dad was such a source of support and kindness. And I had divorced parents and it's like, when I was at my mom's house, I was always on edge. Everybody was anxious. You never knew what you were going to get. And then when we were at our dad's house, we could all take a deep breath and relax and be ourselves. 

And I love my dad so much. I love how supportive he was of me. It's something I wish everybody could experience. It's something I wish Britney could experience and you could experience. And there's no better feeling than being held by your dad. Like there's your mom, of course, but that wasn't something that I was experiencing. And so I learned to rely on my stoic father who flew airplanes. He was like fucking Superman. He flew in the air for a living. He was so tall and so strong, so kind, and he laughed so big and he was just so jolly. He reminds everyone of Steve Martin. 

Sarah: God. Yeah. Everybody should have a Steve Martin pilot dad. That can be one of our initiatives. I also feel in one sense, the term ‘daddy issues’ can be very dismissive. In another sense, I suspect everybody has daddy issues because everybody has a daddy, and we have issues about everything in our life. 

But this also makes me think that because my dad never felt completely emotionally available, that's probably why I want a beautiful giant to come pick me up and put me in his pocket. But now I'm like, but if you have that, you would just want that again. So it's fine to want that. 

Eve: Yeah. Oh, Sarah, I love you so much. I love how you're able to articulate these feelings that feel so universal. And yet I feel like when I say them, I am like a bundle of words and phrases that make no sense. And then you say them, you just thread the needle all the way. It's just amazing. Just like in The Cutting Edge.

Sarah: Thank you. Yeah. Just like in The Cutting Edge! There's also the thing of if I say something, I don't know if it makes sense unless I say it to somebody else who's like, that makes sense. So the sense only happens between people. It takes two to make sense.

Eve: Yeah, just the way Britney so honestly articulates wanting this also. To me, in this bit, I just want to hold her. So as I said, her father pushes the kids. She starts getting into local dance competitions. And she's doing routines and she's twirling a cane and wearing a top hat, and she's winning them all. She's working her way through the talent circuit. 

And all of these judges, and I'm not familiar with this world of l I guess child pageantry or whatever, but I guess there are talent scouts. And an important talent scout is at one of these and suggests that they go to the all-new Mickey Mouse Club auditions. And they drive eight hours to Atlanta, and there are 2,000 children there. And she goes through the auditions and they're looking for people who are 10, and she at this point is eight years old. So she auditions and she nails it. She meets this girl from Pennsylvania. Her name is Christina Aguilera. 

Sarah: Oh my God. 

Eve: Yeah. So they meet, and they will be in and out of each other's lives probably for the rest of their lives. They will be uttered in the same sentence. And they meet at this audition, and they're both told that they are simply too young and that they're not going to make the cut.

But one of the people there urges Lynn, Britney's mom, to take her to New York City so she can start working and build up a resume. Because they might be having auditions for the Mickey Mouse Club again in a year or two years. So Lynn holds on to that. And then she sends footage of Britney to an agent that this person recommended to them. And it's a video of Britney singing.

And the agent is this woman, Nancy Carson, and she says please come to New York and meet me. So they get on an Amtrak they go to New York, and our gal Britney Jean Spears is signed to a talent agency at eight years old.

Sarah Wow. Wow. 

Eve: And oh, and at this time, Lynn must have been pregnant, because then Britney's little sister, Jamie Lynn, is born. The thing about memoirs specifically, I think, is it's all in the person's take on everything. But sometimes I'm like, I just need to see a timeline of when did your mom get pregnant? When did this happen? Because how did people have the time, and the last time we heard of Lynn and Jamie interacting, it was that he was abusive and drunk. But she is pregnant for all of the Mickey Mouse Club audition. 

So they were interacting in other ways too. And of course, Britney wouldn't know that. But I'm just always wanting to follow it and wanting to make sense of it. And I'm like, I wish I could sit you down and ask you questions. 

Sarah: We really, yeah, we need to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding the conception of Jamie Lynn Spears.

Eve: Absolutely. And I'm glad that you, once again, articulating everything that I need articulated. So yeah, Zoey 101 herself is born. And then her mother, Lynn, is with Britney soon after the birth and has a postpartum hemorrhage and starts just losing a ton of blood. And Britney is hugely traumatized by this event. She sees her mom nearly bleed out. 

Sarah: Oh my God. Yeah. 

Eve: And this is a few days. Her mom was back out in the world, so to speak, when this happened. So it was a big shock to her. And then she becomes obsessed with her mom. She's like, I don't want to leave her side. I'm very afraid that something will happen. And I'm sure in a way, this almost has less to do with the postpartum hemorrhage, even though that is visually very traumatic. But probably more to do with her dad and the idea of losing her mom, who is the parent that she gets along with more. That would be so traumatic. So when she goes to gymnastics class and all that, her mom has to be nearby.

There's this one passage that I love so much. And it speaks to the dad stuff that Britney was talking about. She says, “I was a little girl with big dreams. I wanted to be a star like Madonna, Dolly Parton, or Whitney Houston, but I had simpler dreams, too. Dreams that seemed even harder to achieve and that felt too ambitious to say out loud. I want my dad to stop drinking. I want my mom to stop yelling. I want everyone to be okay.” 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Eve: When she was talking about when she's performing, people are watching her, everyone's happy. So it's like she really is becoming this little soldier for her family, where it's like dad's drunk, mom's upset, mom's bleeding out, let me dance, let me do what I can to keep everyone happy.

Sarah: Yeah. Oh my God. 

Eve: It's a perfect storm. It's creating somebody who says yes, follows the rules, tries to make everyone happy. And then eventually, as we all know, snaps, justifiably.

Sarah: So I think, is this the thing we've realized lately? 

Eve: Exactly. She's 10 years old at this time and she's talking about her big dreams and her small dreams in a way that no 10-year-old should be thinking this way. And unfortunately, many are. 

Sarah: Here, I'm going to read you this passage. 

Eve: Okay. 

Sarah: This is from a Rolling Stone story called, The Tragedy of Britney Spears, which is very inexcusably mean in some places, and then still provides material for empathy in others. So here's a paragraph from this. 

“Britney's first two albums sold more than 39 million records, making her part of a teen pop trifecta, with the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync, that comprised the bestselling acts in Jive’s history. Some in her camp argued that Britney was too young to be pushed so hard and wanted her to return to Kentwood to reconnect with girlfriends. There were meetings where people would fight about giving Britney a break. But in the end, the machine always won. Says a friend, “Brittany wanted it too, but she wasn't aware of the price tag. Those who advocated too much were shoved aside.” 

Eve: Wow. So now Britney is invited to be on Star Search. Do you remember Star Search? 

Sarah: I know of Star Search. I feel like it would show up in a lot of E! True Hollywood Stories, and Ed McMahon would have on a child and mispronounce their name. And they would sing a song.

Eve: That is my experience with Star Search also. It's in everyone's story, but I don't remember ever watching it. Britney does a version of a Judy Garland song in the first round, and she advances to the next round. 

So Star Search is like a kid's, I think it's only kids, right? Where they come and sing or perform, and then they go through rounds. So she gets onto the next round after singing, I Don't Care by Judy Garland. And then in the next round, she sings, Love Can Build a Bridge. 

Sarah: By The Judds. 

Eve: By The Judds. And I don't know if you've seen the clip of her singing this, but what is remarkable is when we think of Brittany's voice now, we think of that sexy baby voice, right? All of her recent music speaks to that. And truly in this clip, and even on her first album, there's a depth, there's a deepness, literally, to her voice. She has a deep voice, and she belts. 

And she's 10 years old in this Star Search clip. There's not even a little bit of the baby voice. It's all this sort of deep R&B with a lot of power behind it. Which is so interesting. I don't know how the evolution happened, and you hear it on her first album too. On her first album, you do hear a little bit of the baby thing, which probably was like something that somebody came up with because of the Lolita image. But if you think of …Baby One More Time, it's the deep sort of, it's not that stuff that we think of when we now think of Britney, but we'll get to that. 

She's interviewed by Ed McMahon. She's 10 years old. Ed McMahon says, “You have the most adorable pretty eyes. Do you have a boyfriend?” 

Sarah: Come on! 

Eve: She says, “No.” He says, “Why not?” She goes, “They're mean.” And he goes, “All boys are mean? I'm not mean. What about me?”

Sarah: Why do we talk to children this way? 

Eve: It's like already, at ten years old, her first time being on television. She is being interviewed and it's inappropriate and suggestive. And it's just baffling. It's just baffling. And it's baffling to her, too. She doesn't understand why that keeps happening and why it continues to happen.

So she loses. She's very sad, but her mom gets her a hot fudge sundae. It's a toss up. But then she goes to New York, and she gets a job in an off-Broadway show called, Ruthless. Which is a comedy musical inspired by The Bad Seed. 

Sarah: Which is incredible that The Bad Seed was one of the first things she did, basically.

Eve: Yeah, she plays a psycho, or well, she understudies. A psychotic young girl who kills somebody to get the lead in the school play. It's very All About Eve. There's some gypsy in it. It's very funny. And she's the understudy to a woman named Laura Bell Bundy, who goes on to be nominated for a Tony playing Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, the musical.

Sarah: What? Oh my God. 

Eve: But get this. The other understudy, because when you have a child in a show, you need to have several understudies because anything can happen, anything can go wrong. So there are two understudies, and they are Britney Spears and Natalie Portman. 

Sarah: What? 

Eve: Yes. 

Sarah: No. No, I didn't. I was fully ready for you to say Christina Aguilera.

Eve: No. Natalie Portman. I cannot imagine those two women in a relationship, in the same room. 

Sarah: Should we do an Edinburgh Fringe Festival show imagining their day together? 

Eve: Waiting for this girl to break her legs so that one of them can then perform. 

Sarah: It's baby Natalie and baby Britney riding the Staten Island Ferry.

Eve: Literally, it's wild. And one of them is a Grammy winner now, one of them is an Oscar winner now, and the girl who actually was playing the role, she's only been nominated for a Tony. 

Sarah: Ha! 

Eve: So who's the real winner? No, just kidding. They're all incredibly talented. Okay, so she's in New York, she's the understudy. Eventually the lead girl leaves the show and Britney is offered the lead to take over. And she does. But she doesn't do it for very long because she doesn't enjoy the show and being away from home. She finds out that she's got to perform on Christmas Day and she's literally, I don't want to do this. 

Sarah: Yeah. Also, who's seeing a Bad Seed musical on Christmas Day? Gays. That's who's seeing it.

Eve: And probably me and you. 

Sarah: Yes, given the opportunity. 

Eve: Come on. So she literally wants to go home. So she leaves the show. She goes back to Kentwood, but she does say that this was a huge training thing for her. Like she was performing eight shows a week, or seven shows a week. I don't know what the rules probably were for being a kid. 

And also, what she really admires - and this also reminds me of Amy Winehouse - what she likes is the intimacy and the closeness with the audience in a small off-Broadway theater. And obviously she goes on to be in much bigger venues. 

Sarah: Yeah, she can kiss that goodbye.

Eve: Yeah, but she really just thrives off the audience and she realizes how much she likes that. So after Ruthless, she goes back and auditions for the Mickey Mouse Club. And guess what happens? 

Sarah: And she gets it.

Eve: She gets it, and so does Christina Aguilera. There were some people who were already on it. I think Ryan Gosling was already on it at that point, and Keri Russell was already on it. And then a young boy gets on it. And do you know his name? 

Sarah: Justin Timberlake. 

Eve: And that's exactly right. Justin Timberlake is on the show with her. There are these kids, and they're having the time of their life. They're low key in bootcamp for the entertainment industry, dancing, singing, acting. It's like a variety show so they're doing everything. 

Sarah: Like Russian figure skaters. 

Eve: Absolutely. They're workhorses. But then they get to explore the lot and they get to run around and go to the store and get lunch together. It really does sound like, for a child performer, a dream scenario. I know that there's negative side effects to working that young, but it sounds so fun to me. 

Sarah: But there's negative side effects to going to school for eight hours as well. 

Eve: Absolutely. And who's having that conversation? One bad thing that happens is Britney's grandmother passes away, and Justin's mother lends Lynn and Britney the money for plane fare.

Sarah: Oh wow. 

Eve: That's not necessarily important, but I did think it was interesting. So Britney and Justin are inseparable. They are the best of friends. And at a sleepover, which I guess was a co-ed sleepover, they're playing Truth or Dare, and someone dares Justin to kiss Britney. And it's her first kiss. And playing in the background is a Janet Jackson song.

Sarah: And the song is?

Eve: She doesn't say. 

Sarah: Oh, god damn it. 

Eve: She doesn't say. But I do like the idea that those three people have that moment together, even though Janet is not part of it. But then they all go on…

Sarah: Oh my god, oh Jesus, I didn't think of that. Oh god. Imagine destroying the career of the person whose song is playing when you have your first kiss. It's hard to picture. 

Eve: Can you imagine? 

Sarah: I would never do that to Bruce Springsteen.

Eve: So yes, there's a lot of firsts on the Mickey Mouse Club for Britney. It's an amazing experience. She considers it something that ignites her. She doesn't think of it at all as being anything bad, which is really great. She looks back on it as really one of the best times of her life.

And so a year and a half after getting on the show, the show ends and does not get renewed. And this group of friends disbands. And some of them go to New York, some of them go to Los Angeles. They all keep performing and chasing their dreams. And Britney she's given a choice. And she decides she wants to go back to Kentwood and be normal and live a normal life. And that is where I'll stop for now. 

Sarah: Oh boy.