Unpacking the mess of Jamie Lynn Spears’ book tour
If you’ve been paying attention to pop culture and Internet discourse lately, you’ve probably noticed some increased conflict from the Spears family in the last two weeks. Tension has been building for some time now as the #FreeBritney movement gained traction in the mainstream around 2019, trying to publicize the perceived abuse of Britney Spears’ 13-year-long, now-terminated conservatorship. Britney’s battle against her father Jamie Spears–her primary conservator for a majority of the arrangement–drew intense public attention throughout 2021 due to multiple documentaries on the topic, various investigative pieces from The New York Times and The New Yorker, and Britney’s own increasing outspokenness regarding her situation. The silence of Britney’s sister, Jamie Lynn Spears–star of the hit Nickelodeon show Zoey 101–has drawn criticism since the start of the movement, frequently avoiding a simple #FreeBritney hashtag on her Instagram in favor of promoting a canned reboot for Zoey 101 and Baby Bottle Pop suckers.
Recently, Jamie Lynn has begun speaking out, but it’s not going well. A month after Britney’s explosive testimony from last June, a release date for Jamie Lynn’s then up-coming memoir, Things I Should Have Said, was announced under the “placeholder” title, I Must Confess. Given the timing and apparent reference to lyrics in one of her sister’s songs, the book was preemptively panned as an opportunistic cash-grab. Britney didn’t speak of it for months, but two days after the 2022 New Year, she officially unfollowed her sister on Instagram, igniting rumors of a feud that would become more public in the weeks to come.
On January 12th, six days before the release of her book, Jamie Lynn began her press tour on Good Morning America. She’s adamantly denied that Things I Should Have Said is about her sister, yet in the interviews she’s given thus far, Britney, Britney’s mental health, and Britney’s conservatorship are the most emphasized topics of discussion. In reading the book myself, the entire project appears to be a direct response to the controversy surrounding their family; Jamie Lynn lists the things she’s been through as a means of undermining her sister’s pain, implies Britney’s mental health struggles necessitated intervention, and downplays the culpability of her father in all the damage done.
Considering the situation, I’d hate to misuse a word originally intended as a medical diagnosis, but it’s hard to underemphasize how delusional Jamie Lynn comes across in her interviews. She’s trying to clear her name as a villain in the #FreeBritney story, but contradicts and incriminates herself so haphazardly you’d wonder if she possesses a capacity for self-awareness at all. When ABC interviewer Juju Chang brings up Jamie Lynn’s description of her sister as “erratic, paranoid, spiraling,” she asks Jamie Lynn to describe Britney’s state of mind currently, to which she responds, “I can’t speak to anyone else’s state of mind. I don’t think that’s fair.” Chang then asks about her feelings on the conservatorship to which Jamie Lynn claims ignorance, saying she didn’t understand the conservatorship when it was put into place and understands “just as little” today. It’s a weird claim since later in the interview, and even more in interviews to come, she says she researched ways to help her sister terminate the conservatorship. Her awareness of legal proceedings and comfort speaking on her sister’s mental aptitude changes sentence-to-sentence.
#FreeBritney advocates have speculated that much of the drama has been orchestrated by Lou Taylor, CEO of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment. Rumors have spread that the Good Morning America appearance was filmed at Lou’s house and while I have no evidence to confirm or deny this, Lou’s influence on both Jamie Lynn and the conservatorship is apparent. Britney herself named Lou as a co-conspirator for the scheme in a since-deleted Instagram post, and investigative efforts from The New York Times have directly tied her to the conservatorship’s inception and management. Still, Jamie Lynn maintains a positive relationship with Lou, affectionately referring to her as “Miss Lou” in her book and offering her consistent praise throughout the pages.
You don’t need to know about Jamie Lynn’s allegiance to Lou Taylor to pick up on her pro-conservatorship stance, though. For one thing, her book glaringly avoids discussion of Britney’s allegations against her father and his abuse. In fact, Jamie Lynn praises Jamie for keeping Britney and himself sober (more or less) after taking on the role of conservator. Their relationship seems to have been improved by the arrangement.
When telling Chang vaguely that she “supported” her sister as Britney fought their father in court, she avoids a direct question about whether or not she agreed with the conservatorship. Such a neutral stance is odd given the context and testimonies of misconduct, but evidence shows Jamie Lynn was participating in a cover-up for her father and Miss Lou long before Things I Should Have Said was announced. An alleged DM from Jamie Lynn to a fan shows her privately depicting her sister as “struggling” emotionally, painting a portrait of Britney’s mental health that’s become the foundation for her restraints. Lance Bass’s husband implied that Jamie Lynn was partially responsible for keeping Britney isolated from friends, her statements to him apparently convincing Lance that the conservatorship was necessary for Britney’s health even as #FreeBritney dominated headlines. Jamie Lynn’s husband also sent a message to a #FreeBritney supporter in October of last year saying Britney would be “broke and dead” if it weren’t for Jamie Spears and the conservatorship.
Despite all that, Jamie Lynn claims she supported the conservatorship’s termination if it’s what Britney wanted. On the podcast “Call Her Daddy,” she attests to have encouraged Britney to find different representation from the court-appointed attorney assigned to her case. Jamie Lynn’s criticisms of Sam Ingham, Britney’s former lawyer, have been substantiated; reports allege that Ingham regularly passed on confidential information of Britney’s to her conservators, likely perpetuating the conservatorship for a guaranteed paycheck from the estate. When Jamie Lynn passes blame onto Britney for not taking the steps to hire a new attorney however–telling Good Morning America Britney didn’t “walk through the door” she opened for her–she’s blatantly misrepresenting the conservatorship’s control.
Historically documented, Britney Spears had tried to hire new representation multiple times throughout her conservatorship to no avail. Former judge on the case, Reva Goetz, ejected her hired attorney Adam Streisand from a courtroom in 2008, refusing to recognize him as her counsel under the assertion that Britney lacked the capacity to choose her own representation. In their reporting on the case, Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino alleged that Britney went to such lengths to contact other attorneys she once scheduled a secret meeting in a bathroom to receive a burner phone in a plastic bag. In leaked voicemails from 2009, Britney can be heard telling an attorney’s office that her father had threatened to take her children away if she attempted to terminate the conservatorship.
Jamie Lynn doesn’t mention any of this, instead she implies the conservatorship continued for 13 years because Britney didn’t try hard enough to end it. On Call Her Daddy, she tells interviewer Alex Cooper that her own research (despite not knowing anything about the conservatorship) informed her that Britney’s conservatorship could be dissolved if she held residence out of state for six months. Setting aside the fact Britney couldn’t drive a car without her father’s permission, Jamie Lynn floated the idea in 2020 that Britney could live with her in Louisiana, but Jamie Spears had already petitioned to extend the conservatorship to Louisiana, Hawaii, and Florida in 2019. Any other state she might escape to could feasibly be added to the roster until the entire US was within the borders of Britney’s imprisonment. Even if she found a place her father couldn’t extend his outreach to, how would she access the money tied up in her conservatorship-controlled California estate? And what would a sudden, unapproved move do for her already compromised custody arrangement with her kids?
Depicting the process of conservatorship termination as a simple-step plan Britney merely neglected to employ is disrespectful and misleading, but the question of if Jamie Lynn is doing this all on purpose is unanswered. Evidence points to yes. Clearly, Jamie Lynn tried, on some level, to keep the truth of Britney’s situation quiet; she never spoke on the issue and we have reason to believe she downplayed the severity of the problem to those concerned. She also did have things to gain from the arrangement. Though she says she’s never taken a penny from Britney or her estate, annual expense filings show that Britney footed the bill for multiple flights Jamie Lynn took during the conservatorship. A condo Britney bought in 2000 became claimed as property owned by her conservatorship in 2009, after which Jamie Lynn began referring to the condo as her own. Many believe Jamie Lynn took advantage of the conservatorship to claim ownership over Britney’s assets, an accusation that was further validated in 2020 when she was named as a trustee of Britney’s fortune. In recent interviews, Jamie Lynn says she backed out of this role because she didn’t want to be involved in Britney’s conservatorship, but fans have uncovered a signed document with which Jamie Lynn deposited trust assets into accounts linked to (Miss) Lou Taylor. Shortly before the second part of the Call Her Daddy interview premiered, Britney’s attorney filed claims alleging financial misconduct on the part of her conservators, one finding exposing that Jamie Spears paid more than $178,000 through Britney’s estate to a business entity owned by Jamie Lynn’s husband.
In various ways, it appears that Jamie Lynn benefitted from her sister’s conservatorship, and yet at times, it’s unclear how much information she actually has. After showing a text on Call Her Daddy she allegedly sent her sister, she laments the fact that Britney would intermittently block her phone number. Britney’s phone being tampered with is a longstanding allegation of the conservatorship; reports say her team would change people’s numbers in Britney’s contacts so she wasn’t able to reach out for help or support, further isolating her from loved ones. It’s wholly possible that Jamie Lynn’s number was blocked by someone other than Britney but Jamie Lynn doesn’t publicly entertain that notion. Maybe that’s a calculated move on her part to obscure facts or maybe Jamie Lynn didn’t know that not all activity on Britney’s phone came from her.
In the text message she shows, Jamie Lynn is also adamant that her father wanted to step down from his role as conservator. While Ingham working for Britney and lawyers working for Lynne were in court fighting to have Jamie removed, Jamie Lynn says she felt the strain all the legal battles were having on the family. Her father, she’s convinced, would have left a long time ago if he could have just met with Britney in private; it was Lynne and Ingham that were holding up the process. She doesn’t acknowledge that if Jamie had truly been ready to exit the conservatorship, there would not have been a battle in the first place. Jamie Spears was fighting to remain on board so much that he was calling #FreeBritney a “conspiracy theory” in the press. As I’ve been writing this, reports have emerged saying that Jamie is requesting Britney submit to a deposition and drug test despite her conservatorship being eliminated. Barring the possibility that she’s just incredibly stupid, how poisoned could Jamie Lynn’s mind be to genuinely think her father is the attempted peacemaker here?
Following Jamie Lynn’s appearance on Good Morning America, Britney took to Twitter in response, pushing back against Jamie Lynn’s claim that she was “out of control” in the mid-2000s. The next day, after an extended version of the same interview aired on Nightline, Britney responded to a claim Jamie Lynn made on TV and in her book about an incident with a knife, calling the story a “crazy lie.” Jamie Lynn then posted a message to her Instagram, shaming Britney for publicizing their conflict and blaming her for her family receiving death threats. In response, Britney posted a heartbreaking note to Twitter, expressing her hurt over Jamie Lynn’s loyalty to the people that abused her, recounting moments in which she felt abandoned and mocked by her siblings, and saying she still loves Jamie Lynn unconditionally and admires her strength.
For those following #FreeBritney for years, there’s some excitement in watching Britney respond to accusations in real time. It’s a shame, though, to see her expressing pain so publicly just to speak out against the people she calls “family.” Even more of a sting, Jamie Lynn has persisted in her campaign against her sister’s wishes, enforcing a double standard that appears to be the norm in their dynamic. After chastising Britney for taking her plight to Twitter, it was announced that Jamie Lynn would be appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast where she would be reading private text messages to and from her sister. Jamie Lynn is allowed to speak her truth wherever, whenever, and about whomever, but Britney is vilified by her sister for defending herself in the aftermath. Even after Britney’s attorney sent Jamie Lynn a cease-and-desist letter demanding she abstain from speaking about Britney in public appearances, Jamie Lynn continued her campaign to record an additional part to the Call Her Daddy podcast and discarded Britney’s plea for privacy. Afterward, her own attorney drafted an official response to Britney’s cease-and-desist, blaming Britney for the backlash his client’s received.
In her book, Jamie Lynn says, “My sister’s diatribe assigns outward blame without any self-reflection.” If she gains her own capacity for self-reflection any time in the near future, she’ll hopefully see the irony. It’s not Britney’s fault that Jamie Lynn is getting hate right now. Britney’s endured a level of trauma and abuse that nothing in her sister’s memoir comes close to describing and she’s earned the right to say who hurt her. Instead of internalizing the pain she’s caused, Jamie Lynn has resorted to the dismissive, victim-blaming tactics of the abusers she considers allies, digging herself a deeper hole with every new statement and appearance. More people are piling on–her ex’s sister, an old co-star, employees from her sister’s tour. Not every person with a grievance against Jamie Lynn should be platformed for character assassination, but it’s clear that her own words and actions are what’s caused her reputation to suffer.
So at what point will Jamie Lynn stop making her misfortunes about her sister?