Why won’t celebrities drop Lou Taylor?
On October 10th, 2019, The Hollywood Reporter published a fluff piece lauding the celebrity business manager and CEO of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment, Lou Taylor. The article was oddly timed, painting Lou as a girl-boss who was “breaking the glass ceiling” and deemed a “Business Manager Icon” during a year in which her reputation was crumbling online.
Around April of 2019, when the #FreeBritney movement began rising to prominence on social media, Lou Taylor emerged as #FreeBritney’s primary villain–nicknamed “Loucifer” and “the Gay Demon Exorcist” due to her alleged involvement in the creation and daily operations of Britney Spears’ now-terminated conservatorship.
Lou’s name has been connected to the attempted conservatorships of other celebrities as well. Courtney Love claimed in 2019 that Lou aimed to “take over [her] estate” in 2010, with Love later alleging that Lou had “[tried] for a mutated strain of a conservatorship” over her in an attempt to take control of Kurt Cobain’s name and likeness and sell the publishing rights for Nirvana’s discography. In 2010, Michael Lohan accused Lou Taylor and Dina Lohan of trying to put Lindsay Lohan into a conservatorship as well out of interest in her money.
Lou was also named in a lawsuit in 2021 for her alleged involvement in the Astroworld tragedy, and she’s currently being sued for employment discrimination.
With all this bad press, you’d think that the other celebrity clients of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment would publicly distance themselves from Lou and her companies, but this hasn’t happened to any notable degree. To this day, she retains some of her biggest clients, including pop singer Meghan Trainor, members of the Kardashian-Jenner family, and Britney Spears’ own sister. So why?
A non-exhaustive list of the celebrities rumored or confirmed to have professional associations with Tri Star and/or Lou Taylor:
Jamie Lynn Spears, Post Malone, Meghan Trainor, Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Kendall Jenner, Kris Jenner, Travis Scott, Tristan Thompson, Reba McEntire, Priyanka Chopra, Diddy, Steven Tyler, Mary J. Blige, Florida Georgia Line, Martina McBride, Jack Huston, Orville Peck, Justin Tranter, and Taylor Hill.
When she first took over Britney Spears’ accounting, Lou Taylor’s client list was scarce with star-power, consisting mostly of amateur-turned-professional athletes and a few country music stars. Some point prior to 2008, Lou began working as the business manager of Britney’s teenage sister, Jamie Lynn, as well as Britney’s father and future conservator, Jamie, who was working as a caterer.
Britney was estranged from her family at the time. In 2007, she allegedly sent an email to her then-attorney calling Lou a “crazy lady” and “stalker.”
For reasons unknown, Tri Star gave Jamie Spears a $40,000 loan shortly before he filed for a conservatorship over his eldest daughter. Emails from around that time show Lou, Jamie, and Jamie’s attorney hatching plans for Britney’s conservatorship, discussing who would be appointed Jamie’s co-conservators, which judges would allow Jamie to “administer psychotropic drugs to [Britney],” and the public statement Jamie and co would release after papers for the arrangement were filed.
Once the conservatorship was officially enacted, Lou and Tri Star were brought on as Britney’s business management, benefitting from decisions made by Britney’s conserved estate. Accounts under Britney’s name were opened in a wealth management firm co-founded and co-owned by Lou Taylor. In 2010, the Britney Spears Foundation (launched in 2001) was closed out, with part of its remaining funds being donated to a Christian residential program Lou and her pastor husband, Rob, worked with. The program’s history of gay conversion therapy clashed with Britney Spears’ years-long support of the LGBTQ community.
On occasion, it seems that Lou would bill her own personal ventures to Britney directly. Jamie Spears reportedly hired a security company using Britney’s money to surveil #FreeBritney supporters who criticized Lou. Britney’s current attorney, Mathew Rosengart, has publicly accused Lou of charging her own legal fees to Britney’s estate in support of cases lobbied against the singer’s anti-conservatorship fans. According to various sources, Britney’s earnings also paid for puff pieces about Lou in major Hollywood trade publications–including, for instance, the 2019 article from The Hollywood Reporter.
Lou and her associates seem to have maintained intense control over Britney Spears’ life and finances for the majority of her conservatorship. A court investigator’s report from 2016 states that Tri Star executive Robin Greenhill controlled Britney’s credit card use and administered her medications. Greenhill allegedly monitored Britney’s iPhone activity too–viewing all of her text messages, FaceTime calls, notes, browser history, and photographs. Black Box Security, a security and investigations service provider hired to Britney’s team during the conservatorship, reportedly worked closely with Greenhill and Tri Star to keep Britney under constant surveillance; she was allegedly unable to leave her home without the accompaniment of Black Box personnel, who would inform Jamie, Greenhill, and the security firm’s founder of Britney’s every move via group chat. In 2021, The New York Times reviewed over 180 hours of audio recordings from a device secretly planted in Britney’s bedroom. According to a former employee of the security firm, Black Box produced the recordings.
Like Tri Star, Black Box did not appear to support many (or any) big-name clients prior to their work with Britney. Once hired by Britney’s conservators, Black Box added other celebrities to their roster–stars like Lana Del Rey, Miley Cyrus, and members of the Kardashian-Jenner family.
Interestingly, the Kardashian-Jenners did not have clear public connections to Lou Taylor, Tri Star, or Black Box Security until around 2019, when Lou was already a bonafide #FreeBritney supervillain. By 2020, Lou and Tri Star were named in filings for the Kardashian Jenner Family Foundation, KKW Beauty (Kim Kardashian’s beauty and fragrance company), Kylie Cosmetics, Kendall Jenner Inc., and Cactus Jack Enterprises LLC (a company owned by Kylie Jenner’s then-boyfriend, Travis Scott).
The family’s business dealings with Lou continue to this day. In February of this year, she helped Kim Kardashian secure a $70.4 million mansion in Malibu, with Kim being given a $48.7 million loan through a trust associated with Tri Star. A month later, Khloe Kardashian took out a $7 million loan supplied by Tri Star for her own home. In April, The Sun reported that Kylie Jenner had taken out a $7.5 million mortgage via Tri Star while purchasing a $36.5 million Holmby Hills mansion.
Kylie’s dealings with Tri Star seem to predate the family’s additional ongoing associations with Lou Taylor. In 2016, the reality star bought a $12.5 million Hidden Hills home through a trust linked to Lou. In 2018, Kylie purchased a separate residence using a $2.75 million loan through yet another trust Lou seemingly provided. In 2019, Kylie acquired a new plot of land, on which she’s reportedly building another mansion next door to her mother, Kris. The property is owned by an LLC with the same documented address as Tri Star Sports and Entertainment.
But the Kardashians’ associations with Britney Spears seem to predate their work with Lou.
In 2012, Khloe worked with Britney during Britney’s brief judging stint and Khloe’s brief hosting stint on the reality competition show, The X-Factor. She spoke highly of Britney at the time, telling Capital FM, “I think she's so funny and amazing.” Kim was then photographed with Britney at a Grammy’s party in 2015. Unnamed sources told Us Weekly at the time, “Kim and Britney met a few times before. Kim has been to her concert a few times. Britney and Kim love each other.” The following year, Kim introduced Britney’s performance at the 2016 VMAs, penning a tweet later in the night that explicitly called Britney a “friend.” A video recorded by Kim shows the two hanging out backstage.
Post-conservatorship, Britney has lambasted Lou Taylor on social media multiple times. In February, she wrote on Instagram, “Nobody else would have lived through what [Lou Taylor and Robin Greenhill] did to me… I lived through all of it and I remember all of it… I will sue the shit out of Tri Star.”
Months later, Britney praised Khloe Kardashian’s crimped hair on Twitter and called Khloe beautiful. Khloe and Kim both replied to Britney’s tweet with friendly messages, though Britney has since deleted the tweet (given the amount Britney deletes her posts on social media, this isn’t necessarily an indicator that her positive feelings toward Khloe and/or her hair have changed).
It’s unclear if Britney knows about the Kardashian-Jenner girls’ relationship with Lou Taylor and Tri Star. In all her rants against the conservatorship, she’s never made mention of any animosity toward Lou’s other clients (other than her own sister).
But the idea that the Kardashian-Jenners aren’t aware of Britney’s contentious history with Lou seems unlikely; Lou’s connections to Britney’s conservatorship are well-documented–a majority of her Wikipedia page is dedicated to it–and the Kardashians are definitely conscious of the conservatorship and its controversies. When The New York Times’ first documentary on the subject premiered in February of 2021, Kim wrote on her Instagram story that she’d watched it and empathized with Britney’s struggles in the media, though she didn’t say anything about the conservatorship.
Later in June, following Britney’s explosive testimony from earlier that day in which she alleged horrific abuse at the hands of her conservators, Khloe tweeted, “No one should be treated like this. Stay strong Queen!! You deserve better” along with the #FreeBritney hashtag. The NYT released a second documentary soon after with previously unheard information about Tri Star and their alleged exploitation of Britney Spears’ conservatorship–specifically that Tri Star and Black Box surveilled Britney without her knowledge.
The Kardashians have not offered any further commentary on Britney’s situation, and they’ve dodged multiple major publications’ requests for comment about their relationship with Lou and her companies. An unnamed source told Page Six in October of 2021 that family members “only want the best for Britney and wish her genuine happiness.” According to the publication, “A second insider said the famous clan ‘believes in due process and trusts that the professionals who work for and alongside them have their best interests at heart until proven otherwise.’”
A few days ago, Kim Kardashian shared a photo on her Instagram story of an affectionate note sent to her by “Lou and The Tri Star Team.”
She’s not the only Tri Star client who has publicly expressed positive feelings toward Lou Taylor and/or her associates following the #FreeBritney scandal. Priyanka Chopra Jonas wished Lou a “Happy Birthday” on Instagram in October of last year. Mary J. Blige thanked Tri Star during an acceptance speech at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards.
In April of this year, Meghan Trainor seemed to sing Lou’s praises during a podcast with Trisha Paytas while discussing how Kris Jenner came to be featured in her music video for “Mother,” saying:
“I have really good management… You know how everyone in our industry is like ‘I fucking hate my managers’? I have the best… They’re friends with the Kardashians so I was like, ‘Do you think we could ask Auntie Kris to see if she would do it?’”
The management Trainor and the Kardashian-Jenners have in common is Tri Star Sports and Entertainment and Lou Taylor.
When Paytas asks how Trainor became “so connected” in the industry, making mention of her links to Britney, Trainor mouths or gestures something off-camera, then jokes audibly, “I’m not allowed to say that anymore.” Fans have taken this as Trainor admitting she’s been banned from discussing Britney in public, which doesn’t seem unlikely given some of the comments she’s made about the popstar in the past.
Similar to the Kardashians, Trainor’s public interactions with Britney were at one time friendly. Trainor has talked about her love for Britney before, citing the popstar as an influence for her work as a musician and performer. In 2016, Britney posted a video of herself dancing to Trainor’s song “Me Too” (a song that sounds a lot like Britney’s Femme Fatale track “Trouble for Me,” though it’s never been acknowledged by either singer). Trainor responded by sharing the video with the caption, “When all your dreams come true.”
But not all of Trainor’s statements have been quite so kind. In 2020, during a podcast with Whitney Cummings, Trainor made a comment implying that Britney doesn’t record the vocals for her own albums–an ironic complaint since the only Britney album that’s commonly suspected to feature a different lead vocalist was made and released during Britney’s conservatorship, in a period in which she seemed to have little control over her work. Trainor made another shady remark during a 2016 conversation with L.A. Reid and Gayle King, saying:
“At a very young age, I thought Britney Spears was writing all her lyrics and songs and I just wanted to be Britney Spears… I soon figured out it was Max Martin doing everything, so I loved-… I was a big fan of Max Martin.”
Those comments would’ve likely been forgotten if not for Trainor’s associations with Lou Taylor and some 2019 comments that downplayed the abuse Britney was allegedly suffering. While reports were being made about Britney being forced into a mental health facility she later claimed abused and traumatized her, Meghan said in a red-carpet interview:
“I [know Britney’s] doing well. I have like friends of her family, or we’re close but like, I know she’s doing well and she’s very happy right now… I mean I don’t really know, but I’ve heard she’s doing fine and that makes me happy.”
Even assuming Trainor was just misinformed about Britney’s well-being at the time, a lot of damning information concerning Lou Taylor’s involvement in Britney’s conservatorship has come out since 2019. And yet, Trainor will not distance herself from her controversial business manager, even after her October 2022 Reddit AMA was bombarded with unanswered questions about her connections to Tri Star and an impassioned Britney fan shouted “investigate Lou Taylor” at Trainor’s CD signing that same month.
To date, the only celebrity rumored to have cut ties with Tri Star and Lou Taylor is Jennifer Lopez, though neither Lopez nor any member of her team has said a word to confirm this. For the rest, perhaps Lou’s clients just don’t care about Britney’s alleged abuse enough to feel compelled to distance themselves from one of her alleged abusers. You’d still think that the negative publicity would have been enough to curtail some of these celebrities’ public endorsements of one of Stan Twitter’s most unambiguous villains; but there are some factors worth considering when parsing Lou’s continued influence in the entertainment industry.
The first is religion.
Christian fundamentalism has long been intertwined with the alleged abuse of Britney Spears. In emails allegedly written by Britney in 2007, she writes of Lou Taylor, “[S]he keeps saying I am possessed and that she needs to come and kill these spirits.”
In early 2008, prior to the conservatorship’s inception, Lou appeared as a “spokesperson” for the Spears family on an episode of Today, where her plea to the public is littered with religious language:
“What [the public doesn’t] know about Jamie and Lynne Spears is that every day, Jamie goes to work as a professional chef, asking the Lord to give him the strength to honor the people he works for in the midst of circumstances. That Lynne Spears is brokenhearted… and again asking every day for God to give her strength… I would really hope that all those who seek God for strength in their life would be interceding for this family.”
In Lynne Spears’ 2008 book, she complains that Britney’s relationship with her former boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, influenced her to take a more fluid outlook on religion, writing:
“For the most part, I liked their relationship, although not every aspect of it was pleasing to me. Early in their relationship, for example, she and Justin had been having heartfelt conversations about the meaning of life… one day she came to talk to me.
‘Mama, I just don’t know if there really is a right and a wrong anymore,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, is anything really wrong?’ Looking back, that’s about the time Britney started questioning her Christian faith.”
Those involved in the conservatorships’ inception will claim the arrangement saved Britney’s life. It seems they were also attempting to save her soul, casting out any non-Christian influence that could corrupt their cash cow. According to a 2021TMZ article, Jamie, Greenhill, and Lou “walked around with the bible in hand, proselytizing the word of God.” They allegedly only let Britney read “religious material” in the first year of the conservatorship (a claim that was corroborated by CNN) and there was reportedly “a large measure of intolerance for anyone who wasn't a ‘good Christian.’”
Rob Taylor, Lou’s husband who baptized Jamie Spears in the Jordan River in 2017 (a trip Britney allegedly funded against her will), works as the senior pastor at the Calvary Chapel Brentwood.
Calvary Chapel is an international association of evangelical churches that’s been an influential presence in the lives of the Kardashian family since before any of its now-famous daughters were born. In 1974, Robert Kardashian Sr. was baptized in the Pacific Ocean during a ceremony at the Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. Robert allegedly tried to convert multiple friends and girlfriends of his (including his ex-girlfriend, Priscilla Presley, and former best friend, OJ Simpson) into his born-again faith via services at Calvary Chapel. Most of his attempted conversions didn’t work out, but Kris Houghton (now Kris Jenner) was willing, if not eager, to take on Robert’s religious fervor. The two later married in a ceremony officiated by Calvary Chapel Pastor Kenn Gulliksen.
Robert and Kris’s offspring have been spotted attending Calvary Chapel services in California as well, and Khloe Kardashian’s marriage was officiated by the former leader of the Calvary Community Church of Westlake, who co-founded the California Community Church with Kris in 2009.
We shouldn’t make too much of the Kardashians’ and Taylors’ Calvary connection. Calvary churches employ congregationalist polity, meaning each local church is autonomous and operates under the leadership of a senior pastor rather than a strict, structured hierarchy; so it’s not like attending Calvary services means the Kardashian-Jenners have sworn any allegiance to all Calvary leadership. They attend other, non-Calvary Chapel church services too.
Still, in a religious context, the family seems to be philosophically aligned with Lou and Rob Taylor. Maybe the Kardashians-Jenners’ fondness for Lou’s management of their affairs is influenced by their theological similarities.
Some of Lou’s other clients are self-proclaimed Christians (like Reba McEntire, Diddy, Mary J. Blige, and the men of Florida Georgia Line), but plenty of others have also voiced a less committed relationship to specific religious doctrine (like Travis Scott and Priyanka Chopra Jonas), or have never discussed the topic of religion publicly at all (like Post Malone). That doesn’t mean Lou isn’t interested in tapping into those individuals’ spiritual potential. She’s spoken before about her penchant for converting nonbelievers, telling Today’s Christian Woman in 2007:
“I have an interesting role in the marketplace because I work in the sports and entertainment industry. I know high-profile professionals who've come out of lifestyles of drunkenness, promiscuity, the whole thing. They can't put themselves back into that kind of environment because of the temptation it creates. The Holy Spirit imparts wisdom about how to handle certain invitations and opportunities… I've always felt called to minister to people others don't normally get to. And I know a big part of that means hanging out with people who don't know God yet. I thrive in those situations… We're accountable before the Lord to bring the truth to others.”
Lou also has a known proclivity to become deeply involved in her clients’ lives–bonding with them on a personal and professional level that can become unusually intimate.
In addition to allegedly playing an active role in the governance of Britney Spears’ life, far beyond the boundaries of managing her finances, Lou also gained immeasurable influence over the lives of Britney’s family members. Again, Jamie Spears was baptized by Lou’s husband, Rob Taylor, and though she’s married, Mathew Rosengart posited that Lou and Jamie were sexually/romantically involved with one another during Britney’s conservatorship.
Jamie Lynn Spears has long voiced affection for Lou–the woman who tried to send Jamie Lynn to a Christian residential program for “troubled” young women when she became pregnant at 16 years old (the same program Jamie Spears later donated to from the remaining funds of the Britney Spears Foundation). The strain between Jamie Lynn and her parents, especially during her teenage pregnancy, seems to have strengthened the almost maternal hold “Ms. Lou” had in Jamie Lynn’s life. In her 2022 book, she writes,
“With no children of her own and my unique needs at the time, Ms. Lou and I developed a rapport that went way beyond professional… But in the process, she positioned herself in such a way that made Momma uncomfortable. On one level she soothed my family’s hurts and precipitated the healing process. But I got a sense that Momma may have struggled with the closeness Ms. Lou and I shared. No one could ever take Momma’s place in my life, but the previous months, the ones wrought with fear, disillusionment, and guilt, had put a strain on our relationship.”
“Momma” Lynne can’t hate Lou too much, since she was the one to score Lynne’s book deal in 2008.
In the 2019 Hollywood Reporter puff piece about Lou, attorney Aaron Rosenberg discusses the “holistic approach” of Tri Star, saying that Lou is “redefining what business management means in the 21st Century.” It’s a nice way to say that Lou’s involvement in her clients’ lives often goes beyond the accepted purview of a business manager, acting more like a life coach at times than an accountant. The article says of her relationship with Florida Georgia Line, “In addition to being their money manager she’s also a mentor and friend who pours her heart and soul into her clients.”
When Lindsay Lohan was struggling to get her life back on track in 2010, narrowly escaping a conservatorship at her mother and business manager’s hands (allegedly), an anonymous source told Page Six that Lou, “a deeply religious and principled woman,” had developed a “strong influence” over Lindsay’s life. Lou reportedly wired Lindsay a $10,000 bail bond earlier that year.
Lou fostering such intimate connections with her clients (and their families) perhaps makes it easier to wrap our minds around how she could ensure her business relationships wouldn’t falter despite her declining reputation. Britney Spears has spoken at length about the gaslighting tactics used against her in the conservatorship. Whether she realizes it or not, Jamie Lynn Spears exemplified her own participation in that gaslighting in her 2022 book, constantly insinuating that her sister’s perfectly reasonable behavior is evidence of an unnamed mental illness, while also minimizing Britney’s trauma from the abuse inflicted onto her.
One has to wonder how much Jamie Lynn’s war against her sister has been egged on by Britney’s own abusers, especially since Ms. Lou has been presenting herself as a maternal figure in Jamie Lynn’s life since Jamie Lynn was at least 16 (some reports state that Lou first started working with Jamie Lynn in 2004, when the actress would have been 13).
If Lou could stoke distrust of Britney’s claims in Britney’s own sister, perhaps her other clients have heard a skewed version of events on Britney’s alleged abuse as well, or Lou’s complicity in it.
The most obvious reason, though, for why Lou’s celebrity clients haven’t yet dropped her is the same simple motive for why Britney Spears’ conservatorship lasted as long as it did: everyone’s making too much money.
Emails leaked in the ongoing investigation into Britney Spears’ conservatorship certainly seem to show Lou Taylor engaging in tricky behavior regarding Britney’s estate and how the conservators moved around funds. A 2009 exchange with Jamie Spears’ attorney shows Lou proposing a plan to pay Jamie out of Britney’s tour budget rather than going through the probate court the conservators were accountable to. A year earlier, she sent a different email outlining her intentions to keep the court as unaware of the conservatorships business dealings as possible, writing:
“One of the suggestions that Andrew [Wallet] had was the trust could pay the bills and that would get us around a great deal of the court submission issues, HOWEVER, when it is a business related deductible expense those need to be paid out of Britney Brands, or Britney Touring. You will EXPOSE the trust if you pay business expenses from the Trust.”
When Britney’s second Las Vegas residency was canceled prior to opening, thrusting Britney into an “indefinite work hiatus,” the conditions of Tri Star’s compensation suddenly switched from earning 5% of the Vegas show’s revenue to receiving an automatic $500,000 salary from Britney’s estate, a raise of over $300,000 annually despite the halt on Britney’s business ventures.
Mathew Rosengart is still leading an investigation into Britney’s mysterious finances from the conservatorship. According to claims filed by Rosengart, Tri Star allegedly earned $18 million as Britney’s business managers, meaning that if they only took 5% of Britney’s earnings, her court-reported net worth is about $300 million short (Rosengart couldn’t confirm Tri Star’s $18 million payments, however, as Tri Star has allegedly failed to transfer any of the necessary documents upon request).
At the start of the century, Lou Taylor was accused of “hiding money” owed to the accounting firm Gilman Ciocia (The New York Times reported that Lou “ultimately agreed to pay the money in question” and no lawsuit regarding this allegation was ever filed). More recently, Mary J. Blige was reported to owe the IRS over a million dollars in back taxes. It’s not clear when exactly she started working with Tri Star, but Blige was publicly named a client of Lou’s as early as October of 2017, one of the years in which she allegedly failed to pay taxes on her income.
Sans conservatorship, Lou did work as Lindsay Lohan’s business manager briefly in 2010, however Lindsay terminated Lou’s employment in 2011 with unnamed sources alleging financial mismanagement in Lindsay’s estate.
At times throughout the conservatorship, Jamie Spears also donated about 10% of his income as a conservator to a church run by Lou and Rob Taylor, prompting some to wonder: is that a gesture of spiritual devotion, or a way to pay Lou for her services through a channel exempt from local, state, and federal tax requirements?
Fellow Tri Star clients, the Kardashian-Jenner family, have been suspected of using their own religious affiliations in a similar way. In 2009, Kris Jenner created the California Community Church (previously named the Life Change Church). Two years later, Kim Kardashian said in an interview that she gives 10% of her income to the church every year, a number that matches Kris Jenner’s reported cut as her daughters’ manager. Critics have questioned if the church–which members of the family seldom attend–is a tax haven for Kris’s kids to pay their mom’s management fees in a way that can’t be taxed.
Perhaps in addition to feeling bonded with Lou over their shared religious convictions, the Kardashian-Jenners relate to the ways she likes to manage her money. The family already owes millions of dollars to Lou and Tri Star Sports and Entertainment, with The Sun calculating that they’ve borrowed about $132 million in home loans, over half of which can be traced back to Lou and/or her companies. In 2020, Forbes called out Kylie Jenner’s “web of lies” in a piece explaining the likely fabricated nature of her 2018 claim to be a billionaire. As later estimations of her net worth don’t fit well into the narrative that she was once worth a lot more, the article states:
“One explanation: Kylie’s business quietly fell by more than half in a single year… More likely: The business was never that big to begin with, and the Jenners have lied about it every year since 2016—including having their accountant draft tax returns with false numbers—to help juice Forbes’ estimates of Kylie’s earnings and net worth. While we can’t prove that those documents were fake (though it’s likely), it’s clear that Kylie’s camp has been lying.”
The piece doesn’t make mention of Tri Star or Lou Taylor and it’s unclear if Lou was working as Kylie’s business manager at the time, but we do know that Kylie bought a home through a trust linked to Lou back in 2016, meaning it’s not impossible for Lou to have had some involvement in Kylie’s “web of lies.”
Good or bad, Lou definitely knows more about these celebrities’ finances than we do, and some of the things she knows might make her a better friend than a potential enemy.
Even Jamie Lynn Spears admits that Ms. Lou can be intimidating, claiming in her book that Lou once pressured her to break up with her then-boyfriend to focus on her career instead. Jamie Lynn writes:
“Ms. Lou didn’t mess around. She was direct and her delivery was intimidating. And truth was, she had skin in the game. If I worked, she got paid…When she left, I sat in my living room, stared into space, and tried to get a hold on my panic.”
When Felicia Culotta, Britney Spears’ former assistant, was asked about Lou Taylor during an interview with Netflix documentarians in 2021, Culotta quickly responded, “I will not touch that one, sorry. She will chew me up and spit me out."
In 2020, Courtney Love said that Lou Taylor and her associates (or “pack of wolves”) “almost killed” her and her daughter. Love asserted that she couldn’t speak out against Lou or Tri Star further without risking her family’s safety or experiencing “the PTSD and trauma” Lou’s name triggered in her. In 2022, she also accused Lou of stealing her daughter’s pony.
Multiple Glassdoor reviews from alleged former employees of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment describe the company’s atmosphere poorly. One claims “the owner [Lou Taylor] has created a culture of fear,” with a separate review alleging that even the HR department is “scared of the CEO.” Another alleged former employee writes:
“The CEO is abusive, unprofessional and cares about her image ONLY. She screams, cusses and yells at clients and staff regularly.
There is little to no integrity in those who run the company. The CEO preaches Christian values, yet practices the opposite of ANY type of values in her day-to-day dealings or interactions.”
An intense effort in surveillance seems to be a through-line between Lou’s alleged overseeing of Britney Spears’ conservatorship and her alleged management of her own company, with a reviewer writing:
“There have been instances of the technology team being forced to snoop through everyone's Skype history and emails to look for messages voicing their opinions or concerns about the company or the CEO. Upon finding, those people were terminated on the spot.”
The validity of these reviews can’t be verified as Glassdoor doesn’t require its users to provide proof of their employment for the sake of anonymity; and since a majority of the reviews were posted after the #FreeBritney uprising of 2019, it’s always possible that some Britney stans decided to post false statements to tarnish Tri Star’s reputation (one under the title “If you seek amy.. :)” is almost certainly from a trolling Britney stan).
Still, most of the reviews are so specific in their allegations that they at least come across as credible. Many complain about the healthcare package, excessive workloads, a lack of overtime pay, and backstabbing amongst co-workers–things #FreeBritney activists don’t have much stake in.
And there are reviews that predate the #FreeBritney fixation on Lou Taylor, like this one from 2016:
“The owner is extremely unprofessional. I have never heard anyone use the F word so many times in a short meeting (then pray at the end). She is EXCELLENT with clients, but needs to hire someone else to manage employees. You will never be able to do anything right, she will yell at you in front of everyone, and you will be expected to read her mind. She also has no shame in putting other women down based on what they are wearing or their appearance. As everyone knows, it goes from the top down, and this is the primary reason the turnover is so high.”
Or this one from 2018:
“The CEO is verbally and mentally abusive. Claims to be a Christian but is a horrible example of one. ‘Cool’ factor of job wears off very, very quickly. Lots of yelling. Lots of judgement. Lots of crying because of the yelling and abuse. No room for growth. Horrible, non-existent leadership. Less than stellar benefits.
They will likely delete this page soon and start a new one because their ratings are so bad. Then they will force their employees to give them good reviews.”
If Lou Taylor is as intimidating and scary as these reviews, as well as Courtney Love, Felicia Culotta, and to a lesser extent Jamie Lynn Spears, suggest, the fact that Lou has created a business model in which she’s intimately involved in her clients’ personal, professional, and spiritual lives might hold the key to discovering why many of her celebrity clients haven’t deserted her.
Perhaps they’re simply afraid of what could happen if they do.