Newly Aired Clip Shows Britney Spears Talk Conservatorship Long Before #FreeBritney

Never-before-seen footage of Britney Spears talking about her conservatorship has come to light after British network ITV included the interview clip in a new best-of episode of “The Jonathan Ross Show.”

In the midst of her 13-year conservatorship, the pop star discussed the arrangement during a 2016 sit-down on the long-running talk show. According to the singer, however, her comments were clipped from the final edit.

Recalling the interview in her 2023 memoir, “The Woman in Me,” Spears wrote: “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. Huh. How interesting.”

The clip spent nearly a decade in the archives, but fashion writer Philip Logan spotted it in a compilation episode of “The Jonathan Ross Show” that aired Saturday.

In the clip, Spears touches on the topic when Ross asks about her 2016 album “Glory.”

“You are more involved in this musically, I understand, than previous works, so you’ve taken control,” Ross says. “You’re more in control of your music than before?”

“Yes,” Spears replies.

“Why did it take you so long?” Ross asks. “Why did you wait until now to do it?”

Britney Spears attends the premiere of "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" on July 22, 2019. A fan of the pop star recently spotted long-archived footage of Spears addressing her conservatorship during a 2016 talk show appearance.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin via Getty Images

The “Baby One More Time” singer tells Ross: “Well, there’s a lot of reasons. But I won’t get into the whole story.”

“Well, we know a lot of the whole story, so we don’t have to go over the whole story,” Ross replies. “Or, you know, what we think we know.”

It’s only then that Spears starts to open up a bit.

“It was, like, a thing since the conservatorship... I’m in a conservatorship, it’s the third year of me being under that,” Spears says of the arrangement, which left her father, Jamie Spears, and associates in control of her finances, health decisions and more for over a decade.

At that point, the singer hints at the lack of control she had during the arrangement, and why “Glory” meant so much to her.

“I felt like a lot of the things were planned for me to do, and, you know, being told what to do,” she says. “And I was just like, ‘For this one, I want to make it my baby, and I want to do it myself.’”

“I was very strategic about the way I did it, and that’s why it means so much to me,” Spears adds of the album.

It’s not clear why this portion of the interview wasn’t included in the 2016 broadcast. ITV didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Despite the Grammy winner’s suggestions that she was chafing under the conservatorship, her plight stayed largely hidden until fans began to learn more about the situation from Spears insiders around 2019.

After that, the fan-driven “#FreeBritney” movement started to gain steam, and advocates for the artist ramped up their legal efforts to have Spears released from the arrangement.

During a public hearing in 2021, the singer explained why she was reluctant to come forward about her legal situation.

“I didn’t want to say any of this to anybody, to the public, because I thought people would make fun of me or laugh at me and say, ‘She’s lying, she’s got everything, she’s Britney Spears,’” she told the court. “I’m not lying. I just want my life back, and it’s been 13 years, and it’s enough.”