MUMBAI: Britney Spears’ relationship with her father James Spears is being put under the microscope in the new episode from The New York Times Presents.
Titled “Framing Britney,” the documentary, which released a trailer on Jan. 21, dives into the career highs and lows of the “Oops…I Did It Again” singer as well as her unusual conservatorship situation, which has sparked a great deal of controversy in recent years.
Britney rose to a stratospheric level of fame as a teenager with her 1998 smash hit album …Baby One More Time, but by 2006 faced intense criticism as she publicly struggled with mental health issues. In 2008, her father James was named co-conservator of Britney, along with a lawyer, Andrew Wallet. Though Wallet resigned in 2018, James has continued to control all of Britney’s financial assets and has final say in many of her personal decisions, such as whether or not she gets married. Britney has sought legal action to remove James as conservator and live independently, however, a judge declined the request and extended the conservatorship to September 2021.
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“It is not in Britney’s best interests to be outside the conservatorship but there’s a lot of politics involved,” Wallet told The Daily Mail in October 2020. “Protecting her assets is very important and for that the conservatorship has to stay in place because she is susceptible to undue influences.”
The legal battle has sparked the “Free Britney” movement, which wants to remove the “Piece of Me” artist from the conservatorship. Footage from a protest in Los Angeles can be seen in the new trailer for the documentary episode.
In addition to highlighting her relationship with James, the documentary will also explore the ways in which the public turned on Britney during her most vulnerable time in the spotlight, turning her mental health crisis into a “cruel national sport,” per the description.
As one person put in the trailer, “People became fascinated with her unraveling,” while another added that “how we treated her was disgusting.”
