The “Controlling Britney Spears” Documentary Claims That Britney Spears’ Conservators Tapped Her Phone And Bugged Her Bedroom

September 26, 2021 / Posted by:

Controlling Britney Spears is the follow-up to FX and Hulu’s documentary The New York Times Presents Framing Britney Spears, which came out earlier this year. It’s not to be confused with Netflix’s upcoming Brit Brit doc, Britney Vs Spears, or CNN’s Toxic: Britney Spears’ Battle For Freedom. Basically, everything’s coming up Britney…. documentaries. Controlling Britney Spears was released on Friday, and in it, it’s alleged that her dad/conservator, Jamie Spears, busted out a creepier and more fucked-up version of Every Breath You Take by mirroring her phone and bugging her house so he knew her every move. Cut to that eavesdropping busybody Alexa, looking at Daddy Spears like, “What a creepy fuck, you are!

Liz Day and Samantha Stark, the filmmakers behind both of FX and Hulu’s Britney docs, tell Variety that while making the first one, people in Britney’s inner circle wouldn’t talk to them because they signed NDAs and were afraid of getting the shit sued out of them. All that changed on June 23 when Britney was finally able to talk to the court and told the judge in her case, Judge Brenda Penny, about how the conservatorship controlled every bit of her life and she wanted her greedy and puppetmaster dad out of it. (Britney has since filed to push her dad out of her conservatorship and Daddy Spears filed documents requesting to end the 13-year conservatorship). The next hearing will happen this Wednesday.)

After Britney talked to the court, those who had been a part of her world decided they needed to speak up too and so they agreed to spill to Liz and Samantha who didn’t start filming Controlling Britney Spears (CBS) until after Brit’s testimony.

Rolling Stone says that those who were interviewed for CBS include Britney’s former longtime assistant Felicia “Fe” Culotta, former tour manager Dan George, and former security staffer Alex Vlasov. According to those who talked to Liz and Samantha, Daddy Spears worked with Edan Yemini, head of Black Box security, and Robin Greenhill of Tri Star Sports & Entertainment, Britney’s management company, to keep track of every burp and fart she let out. When Britney asked for an iPhone, Alex says they gave her one, but Truman Show’d the fuck out of it:

Vlasov says Britney’s request for an iPhone prompted Yemini to ask him what types of “monitoring services” or “parental controls” they could load on the new device. When Vlasov questioned the legality of such a move, he says Yemini claimed the court and even Britney’s personal lawyer at the time, Sam Ingham, were in the loop with necessary approvals. Vlasov claims Greenhill eventually proposed setting up an iPad loaded with Britney’s iCloud account so it would “mirror” all her activity; that system allowed the trio to see all the singer’s messages, notes, call logs, browser history, and photographs.

“Edan would bring me text messages Britney would have, and he would ask me to encrypt those messages and give it to him so he could pass it on to Robin and Jamie,” Vlasov says. “They would also monitor conversations with her friends, with her mom, with her lawyer Sam Ingham.”

Vlasov later shows the filmmakers an email purportedly from Ingham, in which he asks Jamie’s lawyers for “written confirmation” that “no one other than my client can access her calls, voicemails, or texts, directly or indirectly.”

Of course, Daddy Spears’ lawyers deny he had access to his daughter’s voicemails, texts, and phone calls.

Alex also claims that Britney was starring in a dark-sided remix of Big Brother called Big Daddy Spears (yes, I heaved while typing that) without knowing it, because her bedroom was bugged.

In what might be the most egregious invasion of privacy alleged in the new documentary, Yemini “had an audio recording device put into Britney’s bedroom,” Vlasov says. The device captured more than 180 hours of audio in 2016, including interactions between Britney and her then-boyfriend as well as her children, he claims. Vlasov, who notes that he was just 21 years old when he started working for Black Box, also states that Yemini brought him the recording device and a USB drive at one point and asked him to “wipe it.”

“They seemed very nervous and said that it was extremely sensitive, that nobody can ever know about this and that’s why I need to delete everything on it so there’s no record of it,” he says. “That raised so many red flags for me, and I did not want to be complicit in whatever they were involved in, so I kept a copy because I don’t want to delete evidence. And I don’t think it was a coincidence it was done days before she was due to meet with a court investigator.”

Liz Day tells Variety Alex has lots of proof of his claims (such as copies of Britney’s texts and audio) and they had his evidence independently verified. They also talked to sources who backed up Alex’s allegations.

It’s also alleged in the doc that Robin Greenhill was just as controlling as Daddy Spears, that Daddy Spears threatened to take away time from Britney with her boys if she pushed back against her conservators just a bit, that Daddy Spears heavily investigated those in the #FreeBritney movement, and that he had to approve any new people, especially men, in Britney’s life and had those people followed by private investigators. Fe, who was also interviewed for Framing Britney Spears, says in Controlling Britney Spears, that before the European leg of the Circus tour in 2009, Daddy Spears told her that Britney no longer wanted her around and she was fired as Britney’s assistant. Since Fe’s hotel rooms were already booked for the tour, she said she could stay on in a different role and that she’d stay away from Britney.  But during the final show of that leg, Fe realized that Daddy Spears served her up a ladle full of shadiness when Britney saw her backstage, ran to her, and asked where she’s been. A light bulb popped up above Fe’s head and she knew the conservators wanted to break up the union of Bri and Fe:

Back in May, Britney supposedly gave her thoughts on the documentaries about her life, saying they were hypocritical for calling out the media for exploiting her when they’re doing the same thing, and added that we need to focus on the positive instead of the negative. Samantha Stark tells Variety that it’s unclear if those words actually came from Britney since she’s still under a conservatorship and there’s such a “tight circle” around her. But Britney’s fiance, Sam Asghari, has had plenty to say about all the docuBRITaries. First, Sam left a comment on Instagram that read: “I hope the profit from these docs go towards fighting against injustice #freebritney.” And he followed that up with this Instagram Story:

I hear you cynical hos cackling at “as an actor.” Excuse you, Sam played Sexy Santa in the first episode of Hacks! Instead of laughing at Sam, you should go after Jean Smart for not thanking him in her Emmys speech!

Pic: Wenn.com, HotNewHipHop

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