Britney Spears’ banned talk show moment finally surfaces 8 years later

A banned moment from a 2016 Britney Spears interview has finally aired. Photo / The Jonathan Ross Show

An infamous banned moment from a Britney Spears chat show interview has finally aired, eight years after it was left on the cutting room floor.

Spears made a rare TV appearance in 2016 on UK chat show The Jonathan Ross Show to promote the release of her latest – and to date, last – studio album, Glory.

Fans in the studio audience for the taping reported that Spears had done something highly unusual in the interview: She’d spoken about her conservatorship, which at that point, she’d been living under for almost a decade. Her father, Jamie, had controlled her life and finances ever since her 2007 public breakdown.

By the time the episode aired, the segment had been cut from the interview.

Now, the unaired moment has finally been aired on UK television on Special Guests, a special looking back at memorable moments from the talk show.

Ross tells Spears he understands she’s “more in control” of her music than before, and asks: “Why did it take you so long? Why did you wait ‘til now to do it?”

Spears, then 34, told him: “Well, um, there’s a lot of reasons, but I won’t get into the whole story.”

Ross said that she didn’t have to speak about anything she didn’t want to, but Spears continued.

Chat show host Jonathan Ross spoke to the pop star about being "in control" of her music. Photo / The Jonathan Ross Show

“Since the conservatorship … I felt like a lot of the things were planned for me to do and, you know, being told what to do. And I was just like, for this [album], 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.”

Asked if she was “happy” and “in a good place right now,” Spears said: “Yes sir.”

Spears had addressed the moment in her 2023 memoir The Woman In Me, and seemed to suggest it had been cut due to a demand from her team.

“I even mentioned the conservatorship on a talk show in 2016, but somehow, that part of the interview didn’t make it to the air,” she wrote. “Huh. How interesting.”

The terms and details of Spears’ conservatorship were a tightly guarded secret for years, until the star herself described the situation as “abusive” during an explosive open court hearing in 2021.

“I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. I want changes, I deserve changes,” she told the court in a searing 20-minute statement provided via video link.

“I just want my life back. It’s been 13 years and it’s enough.”

Several months later, a Los Angeles judge terminated the guardianship, handing Spears her freedom and control of a multimillion-dollar estate after 13 years.