BRITNEY SPEARS may finally have freed herself from her father’s control but her little sister is determined to remind her of her troubled past.
In bombshell new book Things I Should Have Said, Jamie Lynn Spears makes a series of shocking claims about the US singer, 40, including how Britney took a knife and locked them both in a room when Jamie Lynn was just 12.
Describing her sister as “paranoid and erratic”, Jamie Lynn, 30, claims in the memoir that she spent her teenage years working to “keep Britney’s emotional episodes hidden from the world”.
She says the alleged knife incident happened soon after Britney married first husband Jason Alexander, now 39, in 2004, in what Jamie Lynn calls a “haze of substance”.
She writes: “One time, she said to me, ‘Baby, I’m scared’, and took a large knife from the kitchen, pulled me along to my room and she locked us both inside.”
The book has sparked a war of words between the two sisters.
While Jamie Lynn tours American TV chat shows to promote it — telling Nightline that when Britney pulled the knife she was “scared” but too “fearful” to tell anyone — Britney has taken to social media to hit back.
This weekend Britney furiously tweeted that her sister had “stooped to a whole new level of low”.
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She wrote: “Please, please stop with these crazy lies for the Hollywood books. Only a scum person would make up such things.”
Jamie Lynn, mum to girls Maddie, 13, and Ivey, three, also tells how Britney once screamed in her face.
When Jamie Lynn discussed some of her concerns about Britney’s mental health over the years on TV show Good Morning America last week, Britney accused her sister of exploiting her illness.
She wrote on Twitter: “My sister said my behaviour was out of control. She was never around me much 15 years ago, at that time . . . so why are they even talking about that unless she wants to sell a book at my expense?”
The Toxic singer, who reportedly owns the £730,000 condominium in Florida that Jamie Lynn and her family often use, then made a dig: “She never had to work for anything. Everything was always given to her.”
The following day, Jamie shared a long Instagram post in which she claimed her family received death threats because of Britney’s “vague and accusatory posts”.
She added: “I will always love my big sister and be here for her. It’s time to put an end to the unhealthy chaos that has controlled my life for so long.”
Britney responded with a gentler tone, telling her sister: “I love you unconditionally.”
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But she added that what dad Jamie did to her with the court-appointed conservatorship — which took away most of her personal freedoms but was finally dissolved in November after 14 years — was something “they don’t even do to criminals”.
Britney — mum to Sean, 17, and Jayden, 16, by her second husband and former backing dancer Kevin Federline, who she divorced in 2017 after three years of marriage — wrote that Jamie Lynn and their brother Bryan abandoned her when she needed them.
She added: “You guys did absolutely nothing UNTIL a year ago!!!”
Britney congratulated Jamie Lynn for “being strong” in carrying out interviews she is too scared to do, but also wrote: “Go ahead and say what-ever you want . . . it’s so tacky for a family to fight publicly like this!!!”
The row has reached boiling point as Jamie Lynn publicises her book — which she insists is about her and not Britney — on the American media circuit.
Trouble started last June after Britney referred to “my family” and “those who should have helped me” during her conservatorship — which meant she had no control over her £44million fortune and was not allowed to marry fiance Sam Asghari, 27, the personal trainer she has dated since 2016.
Jamie Lynn writes in her book that this statement sparked an “onslaught of hate that put me and my family at risk”.
She adds: “Her references left me reeling. I have only ever had her back. From the earliest days of Britney’s challenges, I have protected her at every turn.”
She goes on to explain how, despite being ten years younger than the Disney star-turned pop princess, Jamie Lynn knew to “keep Britney’s emotional episodes hidden from the world”.
She adds that she and brother Bryan, 44, have been “traumatised” from the exposure and “the flip side of fame”.
Jamie Lynn writes: “I’m not looking for pity. I want Britney and the world to know she isn’t the only one who is left with the scars from our early years of delinquency and manipulation.”
With the large age gap between the Spears sisters, Jamie Lynn explains she saw Britney as a “mother figure” and always wanted her “approval and acceptance”.
She writes: “I’d do just about anything to stay in her good graces and allowed myself to be manipulated my entire life.”
Jamie Lynn followed Britney into showbiz, holding down the lead role in Nickelodeon sitcom Zoey 101 for three years until she became pregnant at age 16, in 2007.
She returned to the limelight in 2013 to launch a country music career but her only single and EP failed to make any impression.
In 2020 she was cast in Netflix romantic drama Sweet Magnolias, the second series of which is due for release next month.
Now she says she was only “allowed to follow my own dreams as long as they were in line with Britney’s”.
When Britney and fellow US singer Justin Timberlake became a teenage power couple in the late Nineties, Britney allowed her sister to tag along as a “third wheel”.
Jamie Lynn writes: “I adored Justin. He wasn’t just my sister’s boyfriend. His relationship with Britney was the only one in my life that gave me a sense of stability.”
In contrast, she distrusted Britney’s former manager Sam Lutfi, who came on to the scene in 2007. Britney was later granted two restraining orders against him.
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Jamie Lynn writes: “I told Momma, ‘He’s creepy and he makes my skin crawl’. I didn’t want him anywhere near us.”
At the same time Britney’s mental health deteriorated amid her divorce from Federline, culminating in her being hospitalised and the conserv-atorship being implemented.
Jamie Lynn, who was aged just 17 when Britney’s conservatorship began, writes: “Early on, I believed that if I tried to let her know how worried I was for her wellbeing, I would also risk losing my sister’s regard and love.”
She admits she became wrapped up in her own life and was convinced by her father Jamie, 69, and mother Lynne, 66, that Britney was OK.
She writes: “There are things I said to keep my family’s name unsullied by gossip, and other things I should have said when I sensed something was wrong.”
In Britney’s eyes, though, such belated concern is an attempt to “sell a book at my expense”.
Jamie Lynn insists she took no part in the controversial conservatorship. But despite this she says she and her husband Jamie Watson, 39, an electronics company boss, have been accused of “theft and neglect in the court of public opinion”.
Los Angeles-based lawyer Lisa MacCarley is not surprised by the fallout following the end of the conservatorship.
She told The Sun: “When these conservatorships turn bad, they turn really bad, and it is often the case that the family members are turned against each other, intentionally or unintentionally.
“I know that Britney was being ‘gaslighted’ throughout the conserv-atorship, and it’s likely that Jamie Lynn was too.”
Yet one of Britney’s most fervent supporters Brennen White, spokesman for the #FreeBritney movement, has no such sympathy for Jamie Lynn.
He said: “She’s stoking the flames to boost sales of a book that no one would be interested in if it weren’t attached to her much more famous and successful sister.
“Jamie Lynn has called Britney paranoid and spiralling but she fails to mention that she was in an involuntary, abusive and hostile conservatorship — a takeover of her life.”
As to the future relationship between Britney and Jamie Lynn, Brennen is not optimistic about the direction in which it looks to be going.
He said: “I believe it’s very unlikely that will be healed.”
- Things I Should Have Said, by Jamie Lynn Spears, is published by Worthy Books on January 18.
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