‘Controlling Britney Spears’ Reveals New Details of Her Life Under Conservatorship

‘Controlling Britney Spears’

Producer/Director Samantha Stark
Supervising Producer Liz Day

Watch on Friday, Sept. 24, at 10 p.m. on FX or stream it on Hulu.

Britney Spears expressed strong objections in June to the court-sanctioned conservatorship, which was largely led by her father, that controlled her life. But how the conservatorship worked had never been fully understood.

Now, after her impassioned speech to a Los Angeles court over the summer, key insiders have come forward to talk publicly for the first time about what they saw. They provide the most detailed account yet of Spears’s life under the unusual legal arrangement that, for the past 13 years, stripped away many of her rights.

A new documentary by The New York Times, “Controlling Britney Spears,” reveals a portrait of an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored every move the pop star made. This new film, by the makers of the Emmy-nominated “Framing Britney Spears,” features exclusive interviews with members of Spears’s inner circle who had intimate knowledge of her life under the conservatorship.

“It really reminded me of somebody that was in prison,” said a former employee of the security firm hired by Spears’s father to protect her. “And security was put in a position to be the prison guards essentially.”

Senior Producer Rachel Abrams
Producer Timothy Moran
Director of Photography Victor Tadashi Suarez
Video Editors Lousine Shamamian, Pierre Takal, Diana DeCilio, Geoff O’Brien

“The New York Times Presents” is a series of documentaries representing the unparalleled journalism and insight of The New York Times, bringing viewers close to the essential stories of our time.