The Britney Spears Conservatorship (Back to Basics)

In this week's episode, I'm breaking down the basics of the Britney Spears conservatorship.

How did Britney end up in a conservatorship? What happened to her in that conservatorship? Who was in charge? 

It's all laid out for you in this episode, but listener beware: this is tragic story.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hello, hello, and welcome back to another great episode of Scandal Queens. It is me, E. B, the celebrity D influencer you love or love to hate. And today, you and me, we're going there. That's right. The conservatorship of Britney Spears, something some of you have been wanting me to talk about for a long, long time. Um, for almost 20 years, it's been one of those topics that kind of stays permanently on the outer reaches of the human consciousness, you know. Um, in the last 10 years, however, the Free Britney movement has brought the Britney Spears Conservatorship right to the forefront again, and with good reason. When it comes to Hollywood stories, the Britney Spears Conservatorship is one of the most twisted, convoluted, manipulated, and without a doubt heartbreaking. It's a story not only of a struggling star, but also a story of threats, of fear, trauma, intimidation, and even, in my personal opinion, imprisonment. The story of the Britney Spears Conservatorship is one of those stories that makes you stop and really look at Hollywood in a different way, the Hollywood machine. Uh, it's the kind of story that makes you question what that Hollywood machine even really is. And that's the story that you and I are going to wade through today: the conservatorship of Britney Spears. Now, this is only the first chapter in what's going to be a very long and interconnected series that you and I are about to start on. The people behind the story of Britney Spears and her conservatorship are also people lurking behind the stories of other major artists like Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Megan Traynor, Mary J. Blige, and more. So I want you to look at today as just the basics, a starting place or a frame of reference for other bigger conversations that we're going to be having from this point. If you're someone who has been like knee deep in Britney Spears court transcripts for the last 10 years, then there's probably not going to be a lot of new information in this episode for you. But if you're someone like me, um, who only kind of has a surface knowledge, which is what I kind of was when I came into this of the Britney Spears Conservatorship and the people that kind of masterminded it, then this episode is probably for you. We're gonna wade through the whole thing, okay, from the years leading to Britney's conservatorship right up to the removal of her father from the conservatorship in 2021. And the idea is to give you a baseline that will allow you to see the larger patterns at play when we start digging into the big fish like Lou Taylor and TriStar Sports and Entertainment, Larry Rudolph, and all the rest of them. So let's get into it. The conservatorship of Britney Spear. But first, you know, I gotta take a little breath here. Let's do a quick temperature check and see what your favorite celebs have been up to over the past week. First up, there is a new trend of celebrity women joining OnlyFans. The newest edition, Shannon Elizabeth, kicked up quite the little media storm, and she's had tongues wagging after joining the ranks of Denise Richards, Jamie Presley, Carmen Electra, Jesse Cave, Kate Nash, Lily Allen, Iggy Azalea, and countless others. Now, I don't have a problem with people doing OnlyFans. Let's just start that right off the base. Uh, I want to say that right at the top, but I do find it kind of sad when you see these celebrity women, uh, women who have had these long careers, who have had access to really big opportunities and networks and, you know, things that you and I can only dream of kind of reduced to this as their main means of income. Uh, because if you go look at the, I don't know. I I went and looked at these accounts. I went and scrolled through a bunch of these, and I I got more kind of like sad and depressed as I went along. I mean, Kate Nash is literally showing her ass to fund a tour, and she says that, like butts for buses, and Lily Allen is selling feet picks for $10 a month. It's just uh there's something about it that's kind of sad to me that the women in the industry still have to play this like sell your body game when they should be able to have these slower, more intentional. And in the cases of some of them, like you would think that they could be living very comfortable lives by now without needing to like additionally sell their bodies to the mob. Um, but these accounts, they just don't they don't feel like that. They don't not all of these feel like I want to have fun. Like some of them feel kind of desperate. And like I said, like Kate Nash is straight up says, like, I have to pay for a tour. So I'm doing this to pay for a tour. So it gets more and more sad. And there's a lot of like Nickelodeon stars on there and former Disney stars. And I don't know, something about it just doesn't sit right with me. It doesn't sit right. I don't like it. It feels um it this I know it is sex work, but this doesn't feel like someone engaging in sex work that they want to engage in. Uh, something about this just kind of feels off. It it feels it feels off. Mormon propaganda is on the rise across social media and your television, and you're probably getting sucked into it. Uh, that's right. You've probably noticed the flood of Mormons across your for you page and television screens on networks like Bravo in in the last year or so. And you're certainly seeing them on your social media feeds, like for sure. I know you are because I I see a million of them. And while it doesn't feel or look like it at first, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives doesn't look like it at first. It's part of a very insidious and targeted marketing campaign from the Church of Latter-day Saints, which is a pretty worrying trend that you kind of need to be aware of. Uh, we first got made 100% concretely aware of this reality in the 2025 Disney Plus documentary Devil in the Family, The Fall of Ruby Frankie. I believe that was the documentary. Maybe it was Keep Sweet. It was one of those Mormon documentaries that came out in the last year, um, which essentially showed that the Mormon church, through third-party marketing agencies, they pay these people to go out and show their squeaky Mormon lives and make Mormonism just look really, really good. They never put the church, like they'll you'll never see a stamp saying this is endorsed by the Church of Latter-day Saints. But that's that's what's going on, right? The influencers and the television stars that you see on Bravo get paid by the LES through third-party agencies, through third-party marketing agencies. And you have to remember that abusive women like Ruby Frankie received that funding. They received that quiet financial support from the church, that backing, which enabled them to go on and keep abusing their children as they built bigger and bigger platforms off the exploitation of their children. And we can see similar patterns now with the secret lives of Mormon wives and that super, super abusive one on there. I don't even, I don't even, I'm not even talking about her and her partner. That's crazy. She's throwing chairs in front of her children. But if she's willing to like throw chairs uh close enough to her children to hit them when she's fighting with another person, I guarantee you those children have seen some shit. Okay. So really, you need to be aware of this trend and you need to understand that this like harmless Mormon content, it is not harmless at all. It is very much trying to lull you into a space, it is trying to distract you. It some of you will be trying to convince you. Um, the Mormons are a big in times death cult. A lot of them have a big end times death cult problem in the Mormon church. And you guys also need to understand that many, many, many, many members of the Mormon church have been infiltrated by the NAR and Dominionism theology. All of that stuff I was talking about with the Kardashians, it's not just Pentecostals, baby. The Mormon evangelicals are into this too. Their ties to the Christian Taliban is well established. You can go and look it up. That's the kind of beliefs that a lot of Mormon believers in the United States have. Those were the beliefs that Chad and Lori Daybell had. Okay, so it wasn't just Ruby Frankie. There's an there's go and just look at Mormon crimes. Go and look at Mormon murders, family murders, family abuse, child abuse. There's a whole Wikipedia page about child sexual abuse in the LDS and the literal playbook that they have to keep it hidden from the public and to keep victims from reporting sexual abuse. Okay. On top of that, the Mormons part of their whole shtick is capitalizing on us, the Gentiles, who they think are gonna die. Like they're very, they think the end times are coming. These people who are in this evangelical branch of the Mormons who fund all of this shit that you watch on TV and your phones, these people think that the end times are coming and they think you and I are gonna get burned alive essentially and tortured to death, and they're very happy about it. And that's why their Mormons are also really, really happy to capitalize on us by selling us harmful shit and doing harmful things to us. That's why so many of them have, you know, gambling companies and liquor companies. They love capitalizing on us with harmful things that they themselves don't even engage in, right? So when you give your attention to Mormon content, you are funding extremist evangelicals. I'm sorry, people don't like to go out here and say the reality, but that's the reality. You're supporting a tax-dodging organization, an organization that literally abuses children. Again, there is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to the LDS sexual child abuse. Okay. And when you watch Mormon shows, that's what you support because every time you put money in a Mormon's pocket, they put money into the church. It's required. They have to tithe a minimum of 10% of their income. So when you give them money on social media by paying attention to them, when you tune in and watch their shows so that they get paid, you are giving the Mormon church more money to harm, abuse, not pay its taxes, and most importantly, give more money to Donald Trump because that is who they support. So please, please, please stop giving your attention to these Mormon moms and influencers and wives. And please, if you need that fix, go and watch the most recent season of Sister Wives with a bunch of Mormons completely unraveling and working through their bullshit. Please don't feed a beast that wants you dead and is praying actively for your downfall and the destruction of the planet. Last but not least, there's been more celebrity AI nonsense. Celebrities seem to be on an AI promotional trail. Demi Moore was the really big one. Um, she's been one of the biggest, loudest of these figures. And when she got backlash for it, she came back and doubled down. They're all pushing AI, right? They're all pushing AI. And Demi Moore's out here with her emaciated arms telling you that you need to let a computer think for you. I don't really think it's necessary. If you're someone that's been following me for a long time, it's probably not necessary to say to you. Um, but I will say to you, these celebrities are paid to say these things. They are paid by marketing companies to promote AI tools. Demi Moore probably doesn't even use an AI tool, okay? And anytime a celebrity is paid, anytime anyone is paid money to specifically say a thing, you need to stop and question it. Okay. If these AI tools were so amazing, if they were so life-changing, there wouldn't be so many people resistant to using them. Okay. There wouldn't be so many fuck-ups. There wouldn't be so many companies who are going, actually, we're gonna stop using this because it's majorly screwed up our inventory or our scheduling or the million of other things, million other things that AI is completely destroyed. So please, as always, be careful with celebrity promotions. And remember, they don't care if you live or die as long as they get paid. So take everything any celebrity says with a grain of salt. All right, it is time, time to dive into the main event, the show you came to listen to. I was gonna say to see, but you came to listen to this. The conservatorship, conservatorship of Britney Spears. So if you want the big picture of this decades-long Hollywood torture session, you really have to go back to the beginning and take a look at who Britney Spears was in the early 2000s because you really like genuinely people that weren't alive for Britney Spears, it's gonna be hard for you to really understand the conservatorship. You can understand the basics 100%, right? You can read, you can like follow a basic timeline and you can follow the stories around it. But if you don't have the context of who Britney Spears was and you didn't kind of experience that firsthand, it's different. It's different. You might think you have an idea because you know, uh Taylor Swift's PR team floods social media all the time. So you think she's the most famous person in the world, but Taylor Swift is nothing, nothing compared to the absolute insanity that circled Britney Spears in the early 2000s. If you're a millennial, then you already know that, right? Britney Spears was the girl. Like she was it. Everyone listened to her. Everyone listened to Britney Spears. I don't care who you were: old, young, metalhead, punk, everybody listened to Britney Spears. Punk bands did covers of Britney Spears. Everybody listened to Britney Spears. There was not a single person on the planet under the age of 40 who didn't have a vague concept, idea, understanding. This was a woman who could shut down countries with her arrival. She almost derailed an entire election and sent an entire country. Well, you I mean, quote unquote, a country, you'll see, um, into this like security spiral because her entering the country completely threw everything off balance. That's how famous Britney Spears was. Girls dressed like her, wanted to be like her, men and boys were all about it. And from the time she stepped onto the scene and blew up, the media couldn't get enough of her either. For a decade, all right. Her first song came out in 1998, right? Right? For a decade, she was on the cover of every magazine, she was on every entertainment news show. You think Taylor Swift is constant? You think she's the biggest thing out there because Swifties won't shut up on TikTok? Britney was the real deal. She was she was one of the last like actual celebrities. But this glimmering godlike pedestal she was on started to shift around 2004. And little did we know that 2004 that was going to be the start of the slide into a 13-year conservatorship. So let's start right there. 2004, Britney Spears' first hit single, Hit Me Baby One More Time, came out in 1998. And by 2004, Britney Spears was being considered like the new Madonna, essentially, right? That's why she ended up on a stage kissing Madonna, is because that was the comparison that was being made. She was even compared to Michael Jackson. Okay, you guys may not like may not like that or not, but as far as levels of fame and like people screaming and paparazzi following her and all of that kind of stuff, she got she did. She got compared to him in some instances. And because, I mean, people followed her all the way around the globe. She was a super star in 2004. And the people loved her, right? The public loved her. She was considered to be this like sweet all-American girl next door, even though she had like this kind of raunchy music that the, you know, the Christians and the conservatives didn't necessarily like. But she was like this girl next door with southern roots. And so that's why it came like as this shock all of a sudden in 2004, when it was announced that Britney Spears had just out of nowhere suddenly married her childhood best friend Jason Alexander. No, not that Jason Alexander. Um, her her childhood best friend Jason Alexander, who she married in a Las Vegas kind of shotgun elopement, you know, Elvis kind of wedding. The media went absolutely mad. You would think America had just declared war or something. Paparazzi went bonkers trying to get pictures of them together, of the ceremony. There was people following her around literally every second of the day. And again, every TV magazine in the country was going on and on and on and on and on about it. It was especially big news because Britney had just been through this very public, very televised breakup with Justin Timberlake, just a little over a year before this. You're like approaching the two-year mark at this point. Um, but she had just spoken about their breakup for the first time previously, the year before in 2003. It had been pretty nasty. And as we found out later, the relationship was pretty nasty too. Um, but people were super curious because that was the last time they had kind of heard about a Britney Spears relationship with Justin Timberlake, and then boom, here we are, started 20 2004, and she's married. But just 55 hours after the Las Vegas wedding, Britney's marriage was annulled, which kind of just kicked off another shit storm of the media, being like, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? What people wanted to know the why, the how, everything. They were trying, like I said, they were trying to stalk around and get pictures of the wedding chapel that they went to. And then suddenly, suddenly, again, out of nowhere. It's like a left hook coming out of nowhere. Britney Spears announces that she's married to her backup dancer, Kevin Fetterline, in September of 2004. So I think here we're kind of starting to see a little bit of the chaos, maybe some rushing to get married, rushing for partnership. But that's not necessarily the sign of a spinning out pop star yet. Like in that moment, none of us really kind of knew that this was kind of signs of what was what was to come. You know, we really didn't, but we were. We were seeing shades of what was to come. So Britney gets married in 2004, and by 2005, it ends up being a pretty quiet year for Britney. She gives birth to her first son, Sean Preston, which is like a big deal, but it's nothing scandalous, nothing crazy. Um, that's in September of 2005. And as with anything she did, it was a media story. People wanted to see the baby. They wanted to know how the mother was doing the whole spin, but it wasn't negative press. I mean, there kind of was negative press around Kevin. Uh, the media never liked Kevin, like right away from the start. He was this money-grubbing bum. They didn't like the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he carried himself. They made fun of everything that he did. They kind of demeaned that he was a dancer. Uh, it was really kind of like the the media and people, because I remember speaking to people and everyone made fun of him. Everyone made fun of him constantly, all the time. And he was just kind of like a joke, okay, for most of 2005. So then we get into 2006, and clearly something is starting to go on, something's unraveling in Britney's personal life. I myself, uh you know, I'm sitting here going, well, she gave birth in September of 2005. And then suddenly, as you can see, we're gonna see some changes. Postpartum, I don't know, you know, I don't know. So by the time we get to 2006, something's off. Rumors are swirling about Britney's marriage, even though Britney and Kevin are already expecting their second child, Jaden James, who gets born on September. Is he also born in September? Was he born in October? Something like that, in in 2006. And that's also the year that the infamous driving with the baby in the lap incident happened. Now we're not really sure what happened. Britney was somewhere with her first son, okay, Sean Preston. She said that the paparazzi came and she got scared, so she just jumped in her car. She's got the baby in her lap, and she's like, she gets filmed driving down the interstate in California with the baby sitting unrestrained in her lap. The public was pissed. Public was pissed. People were absolutely irate and kicked off, just like questioning her mental, you know, like her mental state, her skills as a mother. Should she even have the baby? People were saying the baby should be taken away, like really, really, really crazy stuff. So Britney Spears gives birth to her second child, and then in October, she files for divorce from K Fed. Okay. So that that's crazy already. She's had two babies, uh, and a divorce and a marriage in two years, essentially. But that's not going to be the end of the drama in 2006 because in the weeks following the divorce filings, Britney begins to hit the town, hit the town with the infamous girl gang of the 2000s. It's her, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay freaking Lohan, which is just wild. So Britney gets photographed in like weekly. It seems like it's weekly at this point. And it's almost like these humiliation rituals, right? They get her stumbling out of clubs. She's obviously inebriated, she's she's uh she's having a really, really, really good time, but they're always photographing her at the end of the night. You know, when you don't look your best when you come out of a club. A lot of stuff's been going on. You've been wiggling around, you've been spinning, you're hot, you're sweaty, your makeup's melting, and then you know, you're puffy and you've been drinking. It's, you know, it's not great, but they they take tons of pictures, and it literally seems like every week there's new pictures and she just looks trashier and trashier and trashier. They're doing that on purpose, they're making her look that way on purpose. And they're taking pictures of her, you know, getting in and out of cars with no panties on. And it's that's that's this mad, mad, mad, mad circle. Media and public goes wild over that. Absolutely wild. Suddenly, Brittany was just this bad person. She was just this storm, she was trash, she was a bimbo. It like was a 180 from this sweet little like America sweetheart pop star. Uh suddenly the narrative's flipped, right? It's completely flipped. And Kay Fed goes from being the joke to being like, oh, he's the one at home with the kids, and Britney is out partying. And why I think this is kind of important, because you're seeing this kind of like media centering and collection here. And what I kind of see, look especially looking back at it now, is this consensus building. We have a consensus building by the end of 2006 that something's seriously wrong with Britney Spears, something needs to be done, but people didn't have any clue just how bad it was gonna be. Like things might quiet down for Britney as 2006 faded into 2007 because it looked like she might be partying the she might be quieting down the party stuff over Christmas. Uh, and then February of 2007 comes. And suddenly it's announced to the public that Britney Spears, after being filmed for months out partying with, you know, the likes of Paris Hilton, she has been put in a private rehab facility in Antigua. She's in rehab. Yep. Full-on rehab. It was a bomb, a bomb. America's sweetheart, pop star in treatment for addiction issues. There was not a magazine or an entertainment. I mean, everybody, the news would talk about it at night, like the actual like six o'clock news. It made everything that was going on in 2006 make more sense, but it wasn't the whole of the story. 24 hours after entering rehab, Britney Spears left on her own. She decided to leave and she left. The next day, her life was changed forever. This is the infamous moment. And this is probably what I think they've probably used to get stuff going on her conservatorship in the beginning. But the next day after Britney Spears leaves rehab, paparazzi film her in a barber shop in Tarzana, California. And there, the paparazzis take the unforgettable snaps of Britney Spears shaving her own head with a smile on her face in the mirror. It was like if people thought that the baby in the lap on the interstate was bad, the public went freaking nukely or watching Britney Spears shave her head. That was the only thing people talked about for weeks. For weeks, for weeks. You cannot comprehend the level of actual mainstream media coverage that this got when she shaved her head. And I will tell you this this is just anecdotal anecdotally. This is like just one of my little stories. I was already off of Britney Spears by this point. I liked her in 1998 when she first came out because I was quite young, right? I was in like middle school, loved it, danced to it, had little Britney Spears outfits, whatever. Obviously fell off because I went to high school in 2003, aging myself here. So I wasn't really listening to her anymore by the time this happened. I was into punk and metal and stuff like that. But I will never forget this head-shaving incident in 2007 because this was the moment I came back to Britney Spears. I really, really actually kind of like rejoined the Britney Spears fandom. And it wasn't because I was laughing at her or I thought it was a joke. I kid you not, I can still feel it. Even back then, I knew, I knew she was rebelling against something oppressive. And I resonated with that so much as a kid who was living in this like crushed environment. And I would literally tell my friends, that's a bad bitch. Hell yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah. So while I didn't necessarily understand the suffering, I felt then and I still feel now that that head shave moment was a crucial moment. And that was Britney. I still believe, no matter what it is, I think that that's her rebelling against this horrible, crushing oppression. So if America thought the story of Britney Spears wasn't gonna get any weirder or crazier than her shaving her head in 2007, they were shocked just a few days later when pictures were released of Britney Spears attacking a paparazzi's car with a closed umbrella. Again, I'll never forget those pictures. She's got her head shaved, she's got the umbrella. Her face is a picture of pure fucking rage. And I can't help but to see why, right? And and completely understand it and kind of respect it and sympathize with it in a way. The paparazzi at this point were just as suffocating to Britney Spears as everything else in her life. She literally, and I'm not kidding, she literally couldn't go to a bathroom anywhere in the country without people posting it on the news and in magazines. They would follow her across the country, waiting for the vehicles that she was in to stop so they could take pictures of her coming in and out of gas station bathrooms. And that only got worse for Britney in August of 2007 when she wound up involved in a hit and run accident in a mall parking lot. Allegedly under the influence, she hit a car and damaged it before driving off. And when the star went to court, the judge ordered mandatory drug and alcohol testing. Whatever speculation the public had, it was made worse in September of that same year, 2007, when Britney Spears appeared on the MTV Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards to perform her hit Gimme More. And again, that's if you're a millennial, that's one of those ones that's like seared in your brain. It was, it's one of the most uncomfortable clips you will ever watch. Again, I'm we're gonna play some clips here, and you're gonna hear some stuff. I'm not gonna play this one. It's so depressing, it's so grim. Um, it's it's it's really bad. Brittany's obviously unhappy, she's disjointed, she seems kind of out of sorts, she seems like she stumbles a couple of times. Uh, fans joined in the mockery of the performance. She immediately got mocked. Like as soon as she was offstage, she was getting mocked. People were calling her fat. Newspapers were calling her fat, drunk high, basically every name but Jesus. Entertain entertainment TV shows played these clips on repeat for weeks, for weeks, for weeks. And it was clear that Britney was struggling, but no one cared. She didn't, they didn't, there was no empathy for it. It was like, you're the devil. Look at you, you fat drunk. Brings us into 2008. And this is the year that everything falls apart for Brittany Spears. It's absolutely, absolutely horrible. So on January 3rd, 2008, Britney Spears in the news again. Uh, not for a bad MTV performance this time. This time she's in a standoff with the police and refuses to relinquish custody of her sons to her ex, Kevin Fetterline. Eventually, Britney is convinced to give the children over, and afterward, she's committed to the hospital on a 5150 mental health hold, which is very, very, very, very serious. By the end of January, Britney is back in the hospital, UCLA Medical Center, for a second mental health evaluation. Choppers are flying over the hospital. They're flying over the house. There's media camped out on the street in front of her house. It's like, it's, it's, it's insane. It is insane. It was like, it's essentially the equivalent of those Michael Jackson coming out of his sex abuse trials, the the way the media was, you know, when he gets on the car and dances, it's like that kind of insanity. Here's a clip from the Today show that I think demonstrates just how crazy things were at this time. Let's listen to it.

SPEAKER_04 26:39

There seems to be no end to the drama when it comes to the life of Britney Spears. Once America's sweetheart, the headlines have now turned ugly. NBC's Peter Alexander has the latest.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

If only Britney Spears' family portrait always looked this perfect. The former pop princess and troubled mom recently posed with her two young sons for this week's Okay magazine. Unfortunately, the Spears family drama has dipped to another low. After an awkward hours-long standoff with police last Thursday, Spears was taken to Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for an evaluation and treatment. The public breakdown followed another custody dispute with her ex-husband Kevin Fetterline. At the hospital, Spears was visited by Tough Love Talk Show host, Dr. Phil McGraw.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

I want to make it very clear. She needs to be in treatment. She needs to be in inpatient care.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're not on my Patreon, you you'll have to go and look that video up. That's on my Patreon for everybody uh who's there is one of my subscribers. Um in it, basically what you see is the media circus. They show her being loaded up into the back of an ambulance. She sits up and she's kind of like trying to laugh him off and kind of push them away. You see all the media around the house, you see the hospital, an absolute clown show circus. And then there's Dr. fucking Phil, which you can see there, he and all the other sharks are basically already lining up around Britney. And really interesting, here's what I think you you can go back and listen to this again if you want, but he's using language like she needs to be in inpatient care. So to me, they're, I think they're already setting shit up. I think they're already setting stuff up. And what do you know? Within like I think a day after that Dr. Phil interview, maybe a couple days after that Dr. Phil interview, boom, conservatorship snaps into play. On February 1st, 2008, the LA court placed an emergency, quote unquote, temporary conservatorship over Britney Spears. They place her father, Jamie Spears, as the head of the conservatorship in charge of everything from her personal choices to her medical care and her professional decisions. Andrew Wallett is made co-conservator of Britney's finances along with Jamie Spears. On February 6th, Lou Taylor, for the this is this is when she enters the story, appears on camera for the first time, making a statement for the Spears family. She essentially says that Britney is recovering and asks the public for privacy. But of course, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes, which we'll explore more in an upcoming series. Specifically, you know, a little $40,000 loan Lou Taylor conveniently made to Britney's father just before the conservatorship was filed for. But I digress. After the initial shock of the conservatorship ebbed, Britney's life seemed to quiet down and kind of settled back into a professional flow. Immediately, immediately. I'm talking e me di it lee. Even though there's obviously something very wrong, she gets launched into a comeback. She appears on How I Met Your Mother that same year, 2008, just like two months after the freaking conservatorship gets put on her. She's like so sick she can't manage herself, but she can definitely get up and get her ass on How I Met Your Mother, right? Um, it worked. People were like, oh my God, that's great. They loved her. It was like a lot of positive popularity. People were happy to see her. Media thought she looked great. Then we get to July of 2008. A formal custody agreement is reached between Britney and Kevin Fetterline. Again, seems like things are moving in a positive direction. And then the MTV video awards happen on September 7th of 2008. And again, suddenly, one year later, it's a triumph because remember, just in 2007, we have her just falling apart, basically, on stage, doing give me more. 2008, completely different story. She won a parade of awards that night. She appeared again as this kind of like sweet, bubbly, wholesome, put-together girl next door that America had just come to love. Uh, the media changed its tune from the year before when it had just been talking about what a bad mom Britney Spears was and how gross and terrible and awful she was. They are all of a sudden like, oh, look at this comeback. Isn't it great? And then it gets announced that Britney Spears conservatorship, headed by her father Jamie, is being extended by LA courts indefinitely. And people are confused. People are super confused because here she is. Suddenly seems like she's turned back around. She's got everything back under control. But the courts are saying, no, no, no, no, no, she's not. We're gonna leave her in a conservatorship. And it seems weird because how can a woman who just won an armful of awards, a woman who is running around the country, featuring on cable morning shows every other week and popular syndicated comedies, how does that why if she can work that hard and work that often or work that much, memorizing lines and all this other stuff, why does she need a complete and total conservatorship? After all, there weren't any more party picks with Paris and Lindsay. She wasn't flashing people or driving with her kids in her lap. So why did Britney still need the conservatorship? Public wasn't going to get any answers, not for a long, long, long, long time, but they were about to get one of the most grueling and extended concert tours a pop star has ever undertaken. At the end of 2008, on her birthday, Britney Spears released her album Circus, which was simultaneously announced as a world tour that would begin in March of 2009. Before that tour could begin, however, the bombshell was announced that Britney's boyfriend in that moment, Adnan Galib, and her former manager, Sam Lufty, had been banned from contact with her, and both had had restraining orders filed against them by Britney's estate, making the claim that the two men were, and I quote, trying to take over her affairs. As we would later find out, Britney was unhappy with the circus tour in 2009 and often threatened to quit. But when she did so, as she would reveal years later, she was threatened with the visitation rights of her son. They held it over her head as leverage and basically said, Yeah, you're gonna do this, you're gonna come perform, you're gonna work, and you're gonna behave, or you're not gonna see your kids. By May of 2009, Britney starts dating a new man, Jason Traywick, who starts to appear with her everywhere. And he would eventually be made one of her conservators, which is really fucking shady. Um, though he would never have financial power over Britney. As her last controversy of 2009, Britney kicked up a media storm in Australia when during that leg of her circus tour, fans started leaving the arena because, as it turns out, when she went into this Australian leg of the tour, she was lip-syncing by that point. She was miming everything and people got really upset and they left. And it actually led to changes in Australia that if singers were going to be lip-syncing or miming for like majority of the show or whatever, there's a certain percentage, I think, they have to put that on the ticket and they have to state that on the ticket, which is very interesting because I just saw this clip about Taylor Swift that someone had shared, and it was about this night in Australia when she had decided to sing live and it sounds really, really, really, really bad and pitchy and weak. And I just wonder if she had to do that to so that they didn't put on the ticket that she was lip syncing, because legally in Australia, they have to disclose if they're gonna just lip sync the whole show. I don't know, just interesting something to think about. So now we're in 2010. Brittany continues touring the world with her circus tour, and she also continues making TV appearances and showing up on TV shows and having her music played on TV shows. They did a whole Glee episode about her. Big, big, big deal. Um, there are no more stories or paparazzi moments of her out in the world being a party girl. There's nothing like that. We're not seeing her do hit and runs, we're not seeing any of that kind of stuff. The only time Britney is seen is basically when she's working by this point. That summer, though, we're we start to see what I think are the first leaks, not in Britney, but in the people managing her. Because in 2010, a housekeeper that worked in the Spears home made these bombshell allegations that Jamie Spears, Britney's father and the head of her conservatorship by this point, is an alcoholic. He's a drug abuser, and he's regularly going on these like violent, abusive, screaming tirades. Okay. And then it's September of that year, 2010, another member of the Britney household staff made the news when he launched a lawsuit against Britney Spears and the household, basically. Uh, his name is Fernando Flores, and he had worked as a bodyguard for Britney Spears. He filed a lawsuit in LA in 2010, alleging that the singer had often appeared in front of him nude, had solicited him for sex acts, and performed sex acts on herself in front of him. Flores also alleged that the boys were regularly screamed at and punished inappropriately. Now, immediately, you know, the Britney estate comes out as like, this is absolutely untrue, categorically false, never, ever, ever, ever happened. Interestingly, Kevin Federline's lawyers also come in and say those children have never been abused in the house ever. That's it's all complete and total crap. Britney would never do that. It's all complete and total crap. But still, the story picked up a lot of steam. Some people believed it, some people didn't. Uh, but more stories slowly start leaking through. Staff and crew who worked around Britney were subject to tougher and tougher restrictions. They weren't allowed to, you know, like anybody who was around her had to basically be squeaky clean at all times. They didn't even want soda, like other people to drink sodas around her, as we'll find out. And with that, we get to 2011. And this is when I think we see the Britney Spears conservatorship machine kicking up into a completely brutal psychopathic machine. Um, just truly just off the rail with no checks on what they're doing. Their only uh goal is to squeeze and pump as much money out of Britney Spears as they can. She's not even human at this point to the people running her conservatorship. 2011, and this is when you'll see it. This year is manic. This is insane. Like, this is insane for a healthy person to do. And as we know, Britney was not healthy when this was going on, uh, especially, you know, as we've got court transcripts now and we've got Britney's books and Britney's stories. Uh it's I let's go through this. Let's go through what she was doing in 2011. And I want you to think about trying to do this if you were dealing with severe mental and emotional issues. Okay. So in 2011, here's what Britney Spears did. She released Hold It Against Me, the single in January of 2011. On March 4th, she announces a new tour with Ryan Seacrest. March 25th, she releases the Femme Fatale album. Both of those things have a bunch of press around them. March 29th, she's on Good Morning America. She's announcing now that uh Enrique Iglesias is going to be co-touring with her. April 12th, she gets out, makes another announcement. Nikki Minaj is coming on tour as an opener. June 16th, she starts the tour, the Femme Fatale tour in Sacramento. August 28th, she appears at and performs at the MTV Video Awards again, still amidst touring. October through November, she goes on an international leg of the tour. And remember, she had just been touring all of North America and around the world in 2010, the year before, and then she had also been doing it in 2009. Then in December of 2011, she announces that she's engaged. That is an insane schedule for anyone. Because remember, within that, right? Remember within all of that, you have to consider she's got medical appointments, she's got therapy appointments, she's got to spend time and see her sons and her family. She's training in choreography, she's having fitness, physio, she's going to fittings. There's so much stuff. And now I want you to imagine that someone is extremely emotionally distressed trying to do all of these things with all of the pressure of all the people who are tied to these things working for this giant machine. For a healthy person who isn't struggling, that's a rigorous schedule. That's a lot. But, you know, again, as I want you to imagine that the Britney that we just heard in the back of a cop car offering to make cops lasagna and saying, My mom killed somebody once. Why, why didn't she get in trouble? I want you to imagine that person has to go and be put through that schedule, touring the world and all of these other things in that state. Brittany, of course, had no choice. She got no choice in any of this. She was completely dismissed when she raised concerns with judges, with the courts. Um, anytime she goes, you'll see this. We're going to go through some more instances from 2011 on. She's in court several times to try to bring attention to what's going on in the conservatorship. Nothing. Nothing. Uh, anytime she tries to raise her voice, she gets pushed aside with threats, with coercion, and of course, as we find out, with forced medication. In 2012, Britney's relentless schedule, driven by her father and tri-star sports and entertainment, just went on and on and on. On May 14th of 2012, she was announced as one of the new judges of the hugely popular show X Factor, in which she stars as a coach to Hopeful Singers in a competition format reality show. Britney went on tour for the X-Factor auditions from May 24th throughout the month of June and then went straight into regular filming for the show. It was during this time that Britney allegedly became uncooperative, like really uncooperative. And it was also allegedly during this time, as we would find out from court documents and her book, that this was when they allegedly start forcing Britney to take lithium with the help of psychiatrists who happily write the prescriptions anytime the conservatorship, aka her dad, tells them she's not behaving herself, drugger. The conservatorship, headed by Jamie, tightens up. Rumors start swirling that Britney is being micromanaged by a team of handlers who control everything she does, wears, says, all of it. That same year, her fiance, Justin Treywick, is made co-conservator alongside Jamie Spears, and he gets given control of everything except the money. Everything. He gets to make personal decisions for Britney, he gets to make medical decisions for Britney, he gets to make professional decisions, you name it. Everything but money, he's now in control of over Britney Spears, not her. By the time 2013 rolled around, Britney Spears had been in a conservatorship for a total of five years. And those five years had essentially been nonstop, nonstop working, and it looked as if 2013 was going to be the same. But Britney, again, she seems to be fighting back any way that she can. In January of that year, Britney called off her engagement with Jason Trawick. And then that same month, she also announced she was leaving X Factor to focus on her music career. That was followed by the announcement of a new love interest, David Lucato, in March, who the singer claimed had been introduced to her through quote unquote mutual friends. And I would love to know who those mutual friends are, since there was no one around her that was not personally picked by the conservatorship at that time. The big news, however, came in September of 2013 when it was announced that Britney would be starting a residency in Las Vegas at Planet Hollywood. Fans went absolutely fucking nuts. They didn't have to chase her across the world anymore. They could snatch a piece of Britney at her new Piece of Me residency, which again, these names, the names of her residencies, when you realize what was going on, just sick. Just the people who did this are just absolutely twisted. Britney released her eighth studio album that year, 2013, a year after the last, uh titled Work Bitch. By December, her residency had launched and it was getting rave reviews. It made a shit ton of money. Uh, but guess what was going on behind the scenes? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Jamie Spears and the Gulu Taylor were still flexing their power over the whole of Britney's life. At that time, fans would later discover while they were raking in the cash, Britney was only being paid $2,000 a week out of all the millions she was making for them. Uh and she was also heavily medicated and forced to perform against her will the entire time. Again, per Britney. Per Britney. Things got really nasty for the Conservatorship's PR team, though, when it was revealed that Britney's latest album, Work Bitch, was actually heavily ghost sung by the background singer Maya Marie. Yeah. People were starting to wonder, uh, what's what's what's going on? What's going on? Why isn't she singing her own albums? What's going on? Britney's 2013 Las Vegas residency was such a huge hit. It made everyone but her so much money that in 2014 it was extended by Planet Hollywood until 2017, which meant multiple grueling shows for Britney every week for three more effing years. Brittany started dating TV producer Charlie Eberson during this time, but shortly after the couple got together, Britney was back in rehab in 2014, and Charlie was out of the picture. The break, this time, Britney's camp claim was because Charlie had begun giving Britney, and I quote, energy boosting supplements that landed her in rehab. We all know what that was, right? Like we can all be honest about what he was giving her. Sh again, this is just like Judy Garland territory, right? But Britney wasn't the only one with addiction issues that year. In court documents that would later be made public, it was revealed that this was the year that Britney also alleged her father had succumbed to his own addiction issues. Brittany made the claim to the court who managed her conservatorship, further requesting drug and alcohol testing for her father, Jamie Spears, who was still the main manager of her conservatorship by this point. But what do you think the judge did? Go ahead, I'll just give you, Auggy, you got one guess. What do you think the judge did? Yes, yes, correct. The judge uh completely denied her request to have the father drug and alcohol tested and dismissed every other concern that Britney expressed about her conservatorship and basically said, we're gonna keep extending this. Bye. See you later. Now, as we're getting into 2015, we're getting fully into the Free Britney movement territory. There are tons of rumors by now, mostly circulating on social media platforms. People are saying that Britney is completely under the control of handlers. She's getting completely micromanaged by her father and this whole team of people who control everything around her. Now, other than rumors, there's not a lot of forward movement for Britney in 2015. Yes, the rumors are swirling, and Free Britney starts. Trickle through, but Britney herself is pretty quiet in 2015, just slogging, slogging, slogging through this unforgiving Vegas residency. But what is, I think, worth noting about 2015, just for this kind of overview that we're doing, in 2015, we get our first inside peek at what was going on, not so much from Britney, but from other another another up-and-coming celebrity who was kind of who had a more realistic perspective of what was going on behind the scenes. And this, of all people, came from Iggy Azalea, because Iggy Azalea and Britney Spears collaborated on the single Pretty Girls in 2015. So Iggy Azalea ended up like doing some shows with Britney Spears. And according to Iggy Azalea, Spears was under complete control, just completely, completely controlled by handlers and essentially made no decisions on her own. Worse, Azalea later revealed that even everyone around Britney was also micromanaged. So she she ended up telling the story that she wasn't allowed to have soda backstage, couldn't even have soda around Britney Spears. Iggy Azalea was not allowed to have her own sodas backstage because Britney Spears was backstage. And so it's pretty safe to say if Iggy Azalea is being controlled to that level around Britney Spears, everyone else around Britney Spears was also being controlled to that level. By 2016, there's no keeping the lid on the conservatorship anymore. The Free Britney movement was a full-blown trend, and Britney was heading to court to address the state of her conservatorship and those who controlled her once again. Britney went on the show during this time of a British talk show host, Jonathan Ross. And in an interview that wasn't released to the public until years later, she spoke on the quality of her life and the conservatorship for the very first time. Britney explained basically that she just doesn't have much control over her life since the conservatorship and that everything basically was done or planned for her. Here's actually a piece of that clip of Britney talking about her conservatorship in 2016 that we didn't see at the time in 2016 when it aired.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Why did it take you so long? Why did you wait till now to do it?

SPEAKER_05 46:03

Well, um, there's a lot of reasons, but uh won't get into the whole story.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

But uh Well, we know a lot of the whole story, so we don't have to go over the whole story, or you know, what we think.

SPEAKER_05 46:14

It was like I think since the conservatorship, I'm in a conservatorship, it's it's the third year of me being under that, and I just I felt like a lot of the things were planned for me to do. And um, you know, being told what to do. And I was just like, for this when I want to make it my baby, and I want to do it myself. And I was very strategic about the way I did it. And um, yeah, that's why it means so much to me.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Uh, that paints a picture. In my mind, that paints a picture. I know it's a small clip, but it paints a picture. Even the fact that it was not allowed to be released to the public for years after it was recorded, that also paints a picture. And that picture became a little clearer when Britney appeared in court in 2016, this time to describe the terms of her conservatorship and what she was experiencing to the judge and to express concerns she had about her father and the management of the conservatorship. But what do you think happened? Same thing that happened every other year before. The judge, once again, dismissed Britney's concerns and claims. Get to 2017, we're coming to the part of the story that most of us know, right? Things with Britney's conservatorship escalate in 2017 to the point that it's clear they can't control and zombify Britney as planned, and the public is not settling for the answers they're giving or not giving either. According to a book, Brittany would later release everything got worse, harsher for her in 2017. That was the year that she launched another Vegas residency. This one called Domination. Domination, while she's being imprisoned in this conservatorship. Um, but Britney claimed she fought against this new residency. But when she did, she was told if she didn't perform, she would be found in contempt of court. Because all the way back in the beginning, all the way back in 2008, when they did this conservatorship, they had allegedly gotten to her, gotten her to agree to it. So they were now threatening her, saying, Well, you agreed to this, you signed off on it. So if you don't do it, we're gonna hold you in contempt of court, and we're not gonna let you see your kids. Brittany also alleges during this time, again, they start putting her on more psych meds as punishment. As punishment, and they're restricting her visitation with her sons throughout 2017. By this point, Britney Spears is a puppet, that's what they think, an automaton who has not stopped working since 2008. Every single year, it's been tours, tours, tours, album, album, album, single, single, single, promotion, promotion, promotion. It's unbelievable. If Jamie and others in control noticed the fractures they were causing in Britney, they didn't care. Um, as a new international tour was announced and then launched in June of that year, including a visit to Tel Aviv, which caused a security and political crisis that almost shut down an entire election. True story, Britney showed up in Tel Aviv um in 2017 for a concert, and it was such a big deal, it caused so much traffic that people basically couldn't get to the polls to vote, and she required so much security that there weren't security officers, enough of them left for the political candidates. So she literally almost caused an election disaster in Tel Aviv, which I find very, very interesting. And while Britney suffered behind the servitude of her conservatorship, of all things that in this year, 2017, Katy Perry takes two big swipes at her and basically starts making fun of her in the media and calling her crazy and taking stabs at her, which is unacceptable because Katy Perry, as a pop star, as a well-established pop star by this point, 2017. This isn't 2010, it's 2017. Katy Perry would have had a lot more knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes than we did. She would have had a lot more whispers and knowledge, and yet she still chose to make fun of a woman who is being imprisoned, forced on medication, and kept for her children. That doesn't show you who Katy Perry is, you know. What what else does? What else does her evangelical Trump loving parents? You know, like what what else do we need to see from Katy Perry to get it? Anyway, in 2018, the grueling workload carried on for Britney. It's just absolutely brutal. She was put on a 31-date North American tour. And again, I want you to imagine that this is the Britney Spears that we just saw in the back of a cop car begging police, saying she's scared she'll cook lasagna for them. Okay. I want you to imagine that this is her at this stage. And throughout the whole of this 31-date North American tour, Britney says she was drugs, she was threatened, she didn't want to perform, she was forced to. Throughout all of 2018, her father, still head of the conservatorship, and Lou Taylor, who was managing Britney's business affairs, had made millions off of the deal by this point. By the time they get discharged from the conservatorship in just a couple years from this point, because remember, we're in 2018 by now. This is like yesterday. By the time the conservatorship wraps for them and they're no longer a part of it by 2021, they have made six million dollars for Jamie and 18 million for Lou Taylor and her business off of Britney Spears while she's being paid two grand a week. It it's just it boggles. It boggles the mind. This is slavery. Like this is straight up like slavery. Uh Britney goes back to court again in 2018 and she's making claims to the court that this is she tells the court I'm being made to take lithium against my will. But what happens? What happens? What do you think happens? I'll let you guess while we move on. All right, now we've made it to 2019. We're in 2019. We fast forward 2019. Britney is still in the conservatorship, obviously, and still being subjected to drugging and forced performances. But behind her now, we have the absolute maelstrom that is the free Britney movement. This is the year. It fucking explodes. 2019, that is it. There is no more Mr. Nice Guy for the Free Britney movement. They are everywhere. They are outside of the courthouse on her hearing days, they're all over social media, TikTok, YouTube, you name it. And it looks like they're starting to get the message out there because in January of 2019, it's announced that Jamie Spears is being hospitalized. Yep. Yep. About time, evil motherfucker. Anyway, Britney immediately, um, on the back of that announcement that her father is in the hospital, announces that she's she's putting her Las Vegas residency on hiatus. They say she's too stressed about her father's illness. She cannot perform in Vegas. By April, however, Brittany was being checked into yet another rehab facility. And this time the stay was for four months. Now, the story that got told to the media is Britney is just so stressed about her father's illness that she's had to go into rehab for four months. But as we would find out from Britney later, forced. She was forced there. She was forced to stay there for four months against her will. And as she says, it was done because she didn't want to resume her Las Vegas residency. In the chaos of Jamie's collapse and Britney's re-entry to rehab, stories and rumors about the conservatorship are starting to now trickle through into mainstream media. This isn't on Tumblr and Twitter and TikTok anymore. This is mainstream media focus pieces. In May, Britney was back in court to express her concerns again about her conservatorship. And this time, the judge actually listened. In September, Jamie Spears was forced to step down temporarily as the head of Britney's conservatorship, but the fight wasn't over. Jody Montgomery was put in charge of the conservatorship, and the court, under pressure from the Free Britney movement, ordered a full financial audit of the Spears estate. That same month, Kevin Fetterline, this is really interesting, filed a restraining order against Jamie Spears in the name of his two sons. Fetterline also filed a police report against Britney's father, and their custody agreement got adjusted at this point. But it shows you, I think, the unraveling. We've definitely got the stress of everything going on, crushing Jamie. He can't, he cannot tolerate all the eyes on him, all the demands that will be made from him, from everyone else who's making money off of Britney, who's siphoning money out of this conservatorship. He's now being investigated within this conservatorship. He's got to start explaining where money has gone. You're seeing it, right? You're seeing the cracks start to show. Now, when we get to 2020, we kind of have Jamie kind of out of the way. He's not fully out of the way, but he's kind of been pushed to the side while things are being audited and figured out. And the conservatorship immediately falls apart. 2020, Britney reclaiming more freedom on the back of the court's audit. She's she starts having a little bit of a life. We start seeing her actually having a little bit of a life, not just being this little, okay, yeah, happy automaton on Jonathan Ross, right? It it's a two-edged sword, right? Because with this freedom, we start getting a bizarre rash of Instagram videos. Brittany's got her own social media for the first time ever. Um, and she's basically, you know, we've all seen them by this point. She's on camera, spinning and twirling and dancing. Sometimes she's got knives, sometimes it's pretty sexually provocative. You know, she's showing things and flashing things. Sometimes she doesn't necessarily mean to, and sometimes she seems quite under the influence. It was odd. It's still odd, but it's, you know, it's not illegal, it's not technically harmful. You know, I don't have a problem with her doing it. I think it's odd. I think it's weird, but I don't I don't have any problem with her doing it. Let her do that. If she enjoys doing it, let her do it, you know. Um, but even as odd as it was, as kind of like, I don't know what's going on here, as it sometimes was, doesn't matter. Free Britney movement picking up steam. By August of 2020, Brittany files to completely remove her father permanently from any aspect of the conservatorship. And she requests that it be moved in full into the hands of Bessemer Trust Company. She was partially successful. The judge extended the conservatorship until 2021 and did not remove Jamie from the conservatorship, but did make Bessemer Trust Company co-conservators of Britney's life and estate. Britney stopped work later that year. Okay, so this is this is 2020. Uh, finally having a degree of freedom that allowed her to do so. This is the first time since 2008 she was able to stop working. So we went from 2008 to 2021 with Britney Spears doing basically world tours and album launches every year, even though she was obviously struggling and and not doing well. And that that's super exciting. By 2021, Jamie Spears would be fully removed from the arrangement, as well as Lou Taylor and Tri-Star Sports and Entertainment. And Britney, Britney would basically be all but a free woman. But the story was not over there, though. Not for Britney, and not for figures like Lou Taylor either. Brittany's story is still going, and so are her struggles. While she is no longer under the thumb of her father in the conservatorship, Britney isn't quite thriving as much as her fans had hoped either. Earlier this year in 2026, she was arrested for drunk driving. Well, she was arrested for a DUI. She she it's you guys know. You can go and dig into the whole thing. The recently released arrest footage shows a woman who is scared, anxious, and without a doubt, in my personal opinion, someone who has a little bit, a little bit of education in this. Um, she's a person dealing with heavy trauma and heavy emotional struggles. And let's just say it plainly, she's not okay. She's like right now, as we sit here in 2026, she's not okay. I'm not saying she needs a conservatorship. I've said it a million times. I don't think that's what she needs. If she needs anything, it's just someone who's there to make sure she doesn't get in a car when she's drunk. That's it. But they should have no other control over her life. Um, but like, let's be honest, who is gonna be okay after decades of abuse? Decades of abuse. I mean, that conservatorship was from 2008 to 2021. Okay. But Britney has been a child star since she was eight years old. They put her in the industry at eight years old, you know. So who's gonna be okay after all of that abuse? There are so many other moving parts and pieces to the story, and we could go on and on and on and on and on about them for hours. For example, we could talk about that $40,000 loan that was made to Jamie Spears by Lou Taylor in the days leading up to Britney's initial conservatorship being filed. And we could talk about how, on the back of that first simple loan, Lou Taylor ended up becoming the manager of Britney's estate and the benefactor of $18 million in profits off of Britney Spears. We could also talk about the 2008 emails that show a degree of planning between Jamie and Lou Taylor. We could talk about the mirrored iCloud they used on Britney's phone, or we could talk about the listening devices they placed in her bedroom to spy on her. But frankly, we don't have the time. Okay, those are going to be deep dives for another episode. The next episode, in fact, because that is where you really start to see what we've been talking about all this time. Now we're snapping the puzzle pieces together, this covert and insidious way that Hollywood moves. Because the Britney Conservatorship is the cap on a very rancid and rotten iceberg. It's the scab over a wound that runs deep and feted between Lou Taylor, the Kardashians, Clive Davis, Larry Rudolph, and half a dozen others, all of whom benefited in some way from Britney's conservatorship. Now that you have this piece of the puzzle, we can add the next. And hopefully, as we put these pieces together, you start to see the picture that's taking shape. Because Hollywood is a slave machine. It's an industry built on exploitation and on grifting. Britney became a slave to a money machine. And when she no longer wanted to partake in that machine, she was no longer viewed as human, even by her own family. And that is the real face of Hollywood. That is the same story that's been repeating over and over and over again, just like it did with Anna Nicole, just like it did with Marilyn Monroe, and just like it did with Judy Garland before them. This is the Hollywood industry. The singers, the actors, the producers, the directors, the agents, this is who all of them are. And this is what they are a part of. A beast made out of the blood and bone of human beings, tied to a system that is built to break them beneath it. And that's what I think you'll see on the next episode as we start to take our dive into the deeper end of the pool. And we'll start that dive with Lou Taylor. So make sure you're following Scandal Queens on Apple, Spotify, and all the other places, because it's a deep dive you're not going to want to miss. And that's it. Thank you so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so much for being here with me today. Hope you learned something new, or at least I hope that I kind of helped make the conservatorship make a little bit more sense to you because I know I needed, I needed to put all the pieces together before we get into this gritty stuff next week. So make sure you're following me on social media for the latest updates at the real EB Johnson on everything, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Um, no, I'm on am I on Twitter? I don't post there. I don't know. Um, want an even deeper look into the twisted world of celebrity culture, then head over to patreon.com where you can get bonus episodes, early episodes, and all kinds of essays and extra content on the celebrities you love to hate. Patreon.com slash scandalqueens. And if that's not really your your gig, you you enjoy these episodes, but you want something a little bit more substantial, uh, get away from the celebs and take a deeper look into the psychology of humans and their relationships over on my Substack. I've got more than 2,000 essays all about narcissism and family and relationships and society, and all of that lives over on thereally be johnson.substack.com. For everyone else, I just want to thank you again for being here with me today. We're starting to really pick up, like the podcast is really picking up some steam, and I'm so freaking excited about it. I'm really excited about some stuff I've got coming up. So I'm just thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you love this episode, please leave a five-star review, and that's it. Um, I'll be back next week to start a really exciting two-part deep dive. And I hope you'll be here with me. But until then, keep your secrets close and your receipts closer. Stay scandalous, Queens. Bye bye.