I tapped out of covering Britney Spears for more than a week, because the tabloidization of her divorce from Sam Asghari is already pretty gross. Page Six and TMZ are already raking over every little thing and none of it seems very good for Britney’s already-fragile mental health. The last two stories we discussed about Britney were her statement about the end of her marriage, and the reports of Britney assaulting Sam. We’ve also heard that the split was not particularly warm – Sam believed that Britney was cheating, and they’ve cut their ties with each other completely. Us Weekly devoted their cover story this week to Britney’s new life alone, yet surrounded by shady characters.
There hasn’t been a dull moment for Britney Spears since the pop star confirmed her split from ex Sam Asghari. After chronicling a night out with pals on August 20, Spears introduced fans to her brand-new puppy, Snow, three days later. That same afternoon, she was spotted driving a white Mercedes-Benz with a mystery man near her Thousand Oaks, California, home, prompting some to wonder whether she had already moved on. “This is a new chapter for Britney in more ways than one,” says a source.
With newfound independence come fresh concerns about Spears’ mental health. “Some people are of the opinion that Britney’s on a dangerous downward spiral,” says a second source, “and the stuff she’s been [doing] hasn’t done much to dampen that worry. The concern for Britney’s welfare right now is off the charts.”
According to reports, the man she was seen with on August 23 was Paul Richard Soliz, a former Spears employee with an alleged criminal background. Adds the first source: “She was finally getting to a positive place, and then Sam filed for divorce. People are worried how all of this will affect her.”
There’s talk she’s been reconnecting with family members. Her brother, Bryan, was reportedly spotted at Spears’ house shortly after her split from Asghari was announced. A third source says the singer’s “always been close with Bryan” and that the breakup has her reevaluating her relationship with her mom, Lynne. (Lynne and Spears took steps to reconcile in May following a three-year estrangement.)
She’s tight with her longtime manager, Cade Hudson — the two traveled to Mexico together for a vacation back in March. “Cade is probably her closest confidante right now,” says the second source, who claims Asghari was jealous of the pair’s friendship while he and Spears were still married. She also hangs out with her drivers, bodyguards “and dancers who are either on the payroll or want to be,” adds the source. “The most tragic thing of all is that there seems to be nobody capable of really helping her.”
Spears and Asghari aren’t on speaking terms. “Britney feels manipulated and betrayed by Sam,” explains the second source. The budding actor is currently living in a high-rise luxury building in L.A., and the first source says he’s getting a stipend from Spears: “She’s paying him until they settle everything in court.” The source adds that there’s reason to believe Asghari will fight the prenup: “The people around Britney felt in the last two to three years that Sam had ulterior motives.” The second source says Asghari is “hoping things get resolved quickly,” adding, “He doesn’t want to play hardball with Britney, but if he has to, he will.”
Accusations have flown that both Spears and Asghari were unfaithful. The first source insists Spears didn’t cheat: “That’s just Sam’s way out of the marriage. There was always a plan of action for his future.” A fourth source says Spears did step out on Asghari, twice — including with Soliz. “He was fired when Britney’s team found out they were sleeping together, but then he came back into the picture,” says the source, adding that Asghari learned about Spears’ alleged cheating via security camera footage.
There’s more in the cover story about how she’ll never have a relationship with her father again but she’s softening on her mom. There’s an emphasis on how Britney is surrounding herself yet again with shady characters, which I can believe. I also believe that Britney’s fear that Sam had “ulterior motives” is paranoia on her part – Sam was ride or die for her until she (allegedly) cheated on him and assaulted him. Sigh… I want to say this without the paternalistic attitude towards Britney, but she does need help and she needs people in her life who have her best interests at heart.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Britney Spears announces her new Las Vegas residency at The Park Theater,Image: 391719211, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Avalon
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- Britney Spears announces her new Las Vegas residency at The Park Theater,Image: 391719219, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Judy Eddy / Wenn / Avalon
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- 173935, Britney Spears at the 4th Hollywood Beauty Awards at Avalon Hollywood. Los Angeles, California – Sunday February 25, 2018. Photograph: © PacificCoastNews. Los Angeles Office (PCN): +1 310.822.0419 UK Office (Avalon): +44 (0) 20 7421 6000,Image: 534741262, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – DIRECT SALES ONLY – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: PacificCoastNews / Avalon
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- Britney Spears attends the premiere of “Once Upon A time …in Hollywood” in Los Angeles on Monday, July 22nd, 2019Photograph: © PacificCoastNews. Los Angeles Office (PCN): +1 310.822.0419 UK Office (Avalon): +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 sales@pacificcoastnews.com,Image: 536715406, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Los Angeles Office (PCN): +1 310.822.0419 UK Office (Avalon): +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 sales@pacificcoastnews.com, Model Release: no, Credit line: PacificCoastNews / Avalon
I understand Britney is mentally is and unwell and I hope good things for her. Doesn’t mean she herself isn’t, cannot be, or hasn’t been toxic herself. If I had a guess, I’d believe she cheated, perhaps without even being aware of the transgression at the time. And I believe she has been violent with Sam. And whatever his motives, she’s likely not “innocent.” Mainly deeply unwell.
I have a dream that one day, Britney will emerge the victor of her ghoulish zombified existence and fully recover, sing again on her own terms, and open The Britney Spears Dance Academy for underprivileged children.
Am I daydreaming? Lindsay Lohan has come back from the dead and is now living a classy sheltered élite life a few miles away from Federer, in Dubai. So Brit can be reborn again. We don’t have to help her this time around. Britney must find in herself the mental resources to help Britney.
Unfortunately after the guardianship was ended she seems to not know how to deal with the freedom and didn’t seem willing to get some help of her choosing to help her. I believe Sam did what he could but you can’t help someone who doesn’t seem to want the help. Her lawyer and manager Cade have hired some new house hold help for her to make sure she is eating and taking medication. It’s pretty bad if she can’t even do those basic things. Hopefully she will get the help she needs. These are my opinions and I will stand by them.
@SusanCollins …. countdown to the ride or die free Britney crowd who’ll attack you personally for having a common sense position that doesn’t conform to their position. It’s always projection with some of the diehard Britney fans, arrested development on display!
Leave her alone.
She’s not fine now, because she’s been systematically abused for 14 years. She’s living in trauma. In public.
With people more than willing to see her collapse so they can say “I told you so”.
She never needed a conservatorship. She needed postpartum support. And now she’s still being abused. Leave her alone.
We’ve learned nothing.
This!
I agree
@Kokiri, I have a friend who has lived chaotically for years. I thought she was being treated unfairly. She has been spiraling the last 10 years, and she has been in dangerous situations. After 35 years, and with her parents long gone, she still couldn’t access her trust accounts, and she was homeless, so I called a mutual friend who is her trust executor. It turns out that she has had some form of mental illness for years and that she has lied about it, and that she had access to her account but preferred to live the way she was living. And she hears and sees things that indicate she may be bi-polar and/or paranoid. It finally got to the point where she couldn’t hide it after decades. I feel betrayed because of her lies, but I can be angry because I now insert how sick she is. Her parents didn’t do her any favors, either by working to hide it to save their own reputations. I am not equipped to deal with this type of mental illness, where they seem okay, but the mentally ill person shifts the narrative and makes everyone the aggressor; she is kind to me, but won’t hear reason. For years, I just listened and tried to get her the help she said she needed, but her parents had money, and that stupid trust was her only concern for years. Getting her life together simply didn’t matter because she was too sick, but none of us knew; she comes off as smart and well read and cultured.
Based on what Spears is STILL doing to this day, this was always more than postpartum depression. It looks like a serious mental illness emerged in her mid-20s, like it does for many people, and there are people who will never be functional in this society. Ever. Even with medication, because their brains lie to them and they STOP taking the meds. They want to believe their brains.
Keep your moralizing to yourself. Some of us have experience with this stuff, and pretending that what she is doing is because of untreated PPD instead of something persistently more difficult to treat, doesn’t help anyone. PPD doesn’t make you twirl around in loose underwear on social media. PPD IS dangerous, but Spears has had professional treatment as well as that honey Christian crap her dad did. Loved ones want to help until they give up, because there is no mental help support in this country, and even the best care can fail for severe mental illness.
Some of us HAVE learned, but this is a sick, paternalistic culture. Kanye and Spears are sick, and TMZ is always going to take advantage of the chaos.
If you got this far, thanks for reading. Brevity is not my strength.
Correction: I can’t be angry about my friend’s illness, but the lies hurt. And knowing that she is suffering and can’t seem to direct herself out is hard, and mental healthcare in the U.S. is insufficient. And trying to help doesn’t work. It’s awful for her, but I am tired, and trying to pull a loved one into safety and reality is frequently difficult to impossible.
Do not diagnose the mental health issues of people you’ve never met, don’t know when you’re neither a psychologist/psychiatrist nor their treating doctor. It’s unethical, wildly inaccurate and gross. You don’t know what is happening with Britney. You can’t impose your friend’s story on her, and your anger is weird and misplaced.
The only publicly available mental health diagnosis we have for Britney is that she suffered from Perinatal Depression.
We do also know that she was horrifically mistreated for 14 years in a conservatorship. Something that would negatively impact anyone.
Anything else is between her and (hopefully) her doctors. It’s no one else’s business.
@christina: Having a mentally ill friend is not the same as having personal experience with mental illness. It sounds a bit like your centering your experience of someone else’s mental health struggle as a means to diagnosis a celebrity, which isn’t great. Couple things: PPD can be devastating if it goes untreated. Neither type I nor type II Bipolar disorder is not characterized by auditory or visual hallucinations, and severe mental illness is not a death sentence. I’m not here to minimize your person experience, but part of the reason there are so many misconceptions about mental illness in this country is because people with a lot of privilege make assumptions based on isolated situations. Imagine someone with mental illness reading your comment and thinking (incorrectly) that their crises make them an “aggressor,” “a liar,” or “irredeemable.”
She did not need to be controlled to the extent that she was, but surely you can see that she is not well and hasn’t been for a very, very long time. From her first pregnancy she has been a mess. I always wondered if she was on meds and stopped taking them when she was pregnant and stayed off of them and her illness became more apparent. She needs help, she doesn’t need to be left alone, she needs help. It’s not patronizing or controlling or wishing her ill for wanting her to receive the help that she needs so she can live the life she wants to live. In her current state, she will always end up with shady people in her life, being taken advantage and acting out in the worst way. Her judgment is off or she lacks it. She needs help and I hope she gets it, I fear that without it, her story will come to a bad end.
My friend, who had never suffered from mental health issues or been medicated, had a very severe case of PND after her third child and will now be on meds for life. PND (and perinatal depression) can change you forever. They can unleash latent anxiety and depression. For her it was severe anxiety, depression, OCD and panic attacks. She tried going off her meds after 5 years and it was a disaster and her doctor told her she may well be on them for life.
Mental health is complex and different for everyone. Additionally, a lot of more severe things, like Bipolar, can suddenly reveal themselves in your 20s, with no prior symptoms.
We don’t know what happened with Britney, it could be any number of things. She hasn’t shared it, there’s no way to know, and it is not our business.
What we do know is that Britney had severe perinatal depression (which she has talked about), that she had an incredibly stressful few years after decades of being overworked and heavily controlled, that she went through a very nasty divorce, that the press were harassing her to an insane degree and that she was then conserved against her will when she shouldn’t have been and abused by that conservatorship (including extreme isolation and using mental health professionals, mental health hospitals, and drugs to punish and control her) for 14 years.
That is a lot. That would take anyone years to work through. Made harder by a completely understandable mistrust of mental health professionals and facilities (which she has also stated).
Whatever her issues and struggles are now, they are hers. Unless she chooses to share them, we shouldn’t wildly speculate. What the press is doing now is gross and reminiscent of how they treated her in the past.
I wish her well and hope for the best for her.
I am so bored of this poor girl who hasn’t done anything relevant for years. Of course she is unwell and traumatized. She’s also a grown ass adult who was released from her conservatorship so she can do what she wants. I couldn’t care any less about her or her long-dead career.
Controversial opinion here:
While I have no doubt that Britney’s mental health issues are serious and lifelong. And that things are in a very delicate state right now, I feel like the reporting around her is extremely exaggerated.
I take umbrage with the idea that Britney is doomed to fall to pieces just because Sam has left. And I feel like that is spin coming from him. In fact, I see some signs of progress. She has a relationship with her brother. She’s trying to mend her relationship with her mother. She’s working on new music. She’s hired new medical staff to monitor and keep her on track.
Of course she has a LONG way to go, but I’m not seeing the extreme downward spiral the press is painting the situation as.
@Snuffles I don’t see it so much as “…fall to pieces…” as it is a very legit fear that she will be exploited by unsavory (criminal) characters who are in it for personal profit only.
Yes, that always a possibility. But, quite frankly, I’m dubious on how good Sam was for her in the first place. He seems to have also viewed her as a meal ticket. He was just better at hiding it.
The press has always wanted to monetize Britney’s pain. As they do with Meghan and as they do with Amber. I don’t believe a word Sam says, he accuses her of cheating because that’s what he did. Same old playbook. It’s hard for Britney to trust people because they’ve demonstrated time and time again that they just want to exploit her and steal her money.
If we look back at the reporting around her issues prior to the conservatorship – the media narrative is the same and from pretty much the same outlets. Her family and Lou Taylor were briefing the same stories then as they are now – she needs to be careful with her family as they will try it again esp if Lou Taylor is still around them.
As for her mother – remember she tried to get in on the conservatorship and only started showing support to Britney when Jamie wouldn’t give her a cut of the money from the estate (all Lynne got was enough to cover living expenses IIRC). Lynne is just as money hungry as her ex husband.
I think the press is back to its old tricks when it comes to Britney. Agreed this is all highly exaggerated and gross concern trolling for clicks. She’s allowed to make mistakes and have struggles after a 14 year abusive conservatorship! The way they are all circling her, panting for her to fail is so disgusting.
I’m predicting she may cease to live within a year.
Kokiri. No I’m not ashamed and I’m not giddy that she is sick. Britney is 40 years old and she know she is sick and she knows she needs to get help but refuses to do it. This is her illness and she knows what she needs to do. Let’s not give her a pass for all that goes wrong. Yes the guardianship abused her but she got out and now she needs to pick herself up and not dance around like a stripper on a pole and find a therapist she can trust and get her life back. Mental illness isn’t to be taken lightly nor is it an excuse for everything wrong in your life especially when you don’t get help. So Kokiri back off.
@susancollins I agree completely.
Agreed 💯
Give her a pass? What? It’s none of our business. People’s mental health is private unless they choose to make it public. This shows a stunning misunderstanding of mental health issues in any case. Yeesh.
I agree. Stripper poles are everyones right, healthy or not healthy. (Im not being facetious)
Britney has a long history of shady characters filling the vacuum of her life.
When you have no family or friends, and aren’t stable enough on your own, your only companions are the people you pay or the people who want something from you. Another Sam Lutfi slinking in would not surprise me at all.
I don’t have any doubts that Britney is a mess right now, but it’s interesting that the facts cited by the article don’t seem all that worrisome.
Adopting a dog is a pretty stereotypical post-breakup move. Seeing her brother sounds like it’s probably a good thing? Or at least I’ve never heard anything bad about her brother. I sort of forgot she had one. Reconciling with her mother sounds like it might be complicated, but not like it’s necessarily a path to doom. She’s apparently known Hudson since 2014, so he’s someone who passed both her father’s surveillance and her reevaluation of people post-conservatorship.
The fact that almost all of her friends work for her is a problem. But didn’t we honestly all assume that anyway? Likewise, screwing around with a sort of shady guy is kind of par for the course for her.
I’m not saying she sounds like she’s in a good place, but there isn’t anything new here besides the name of the guy she was cheating with.
If all you knew was the facts cited in this article, yeah, it could be interpreted as hopeful and standard behavior.
But to watch and read and listen to her first hand content paints a different picture. Add in her history of instability and circumstance, and those aren’t the behaviors of someone healthy and thriving.
I’m sure this is a very unpopular opinion, but I think Britney has been very mentally ill for a long time. Her actions, videos, grooming, statements….. I don’t think she is capable of making good decisions and/or caring for herself. Clearly her children don’t think she is good to be around as they have moved to Hawaii with dad. I don’t know what the solution is but I remember when my life was spiraling….I couldn’t make a good choice to save my life (literally) and ran off everyone who wanted to help.
Her Instagram is sad and unsettling.
I don’t understand why it is so easy to believe she cheated. There was a woman (his client) who came forward on social media, she said Sam was behaving like he was single and trying to sleep with his clients. Only story regarding her cheating obviously came from Sam, I totally believe it was projection on his part.
it would benefit Sam if Britney cheated. He would have more public sympathy and (I’m no expert here) give him an upper. hand in the divorce settlement.
Being verrrrry familiar with symptoms consistent with what appears to be Britney’s, manic episodes bring out all kinds of behaviors, esp. hyper sexualization. My sister has manic episodes and they always manifest in one of these two types: hyper-religiosity or nymphomania. I always hope it’s the first one. She’s done some very scary scary stuff in both modes. 🙁
Unfortunately, the medications that control this disease have horrible side effects. Do NOT take your mental health for granted, people! And please be kind to those who suffer.
That is all very well, but like I said, the story only came from Sam’s side. If Britney was jumping on men, I am sure one of them would go to tabloids and get good money for his story. Hell, if the mystery man/men went to Britney’s father, he would get paid, since his father can use the story to prove that she is not of sound mind.
It makes more sense to me someone like Sam was sleeping around and now his marriage is over, he briefed the media that she was the cheater. Until a guy comes forward, I don’t believe anything the tabloids say about Britney.
I don’t think believing that she may have cheated is it is out of the realm of possibilities. Someone with her diagnosis, when in a manic episode can experience hypersexuality. We see this demonstrated on her own social media posts/videos. None of us know who was cheating on who, it’s for the 2 of them to work out.
@Sportie, Some women (Sam’s clients) already came forward that Sam was trying to sleep with them. I am pretty sure who is the cheater. Dancing naked on social media is weird, however Britney was half naked dancing since a young age. Her normal is not the same. I am not comfortable to conclude that due to her illness, she is a cheater. That doesn’t seem right to me. Like I said, until a side-guy coming forward (like Sam’s clients did), I don’t believe that she is a cheater.
@Sevenblue – I just want to make sure you don’t think we are in disagreement. We are not. My points were 1. Sam is financially and socially motivated to accuse her of cheating and 2. Britney appears to exhibit classic manic behaviors and deserves sympathy.
Agreed. He was not faithful to her. That’s clear. And it’s easy for him to say it because I guess her indiscretion is on security video. His is from women who are talking, and he knows that people won’t care much without “proof”. Unless the women are powerful, no one will really care.
I thought Sam was different. Trying to screw everyone around while you are in a public marriage is dumb. He is like everyone else in her life.
Agreeing with Sevenblue, there’s been a steady stream of women who trained at Sam’s gym coming forward to say Sam was ALWAYS hitting on them to hook up. Some transferred gyms to get away from it. His money demands irk me, especially as he started during Daddy Spears’ control.
Britney is not that innocent, she even stated so in her song. Idk why we keep infantilizing her and babying her to the extent that we can’t recognize that maybe she can also be an asshole and impossible to be in a mature relationship with anyone. Medicating her to the point where she is a zombie and too tired to be her hyper self will not help her interpersonal relationships, but leaving her without meds, will not either.
Therapy is impossible because she doesn’t believe in it and won’t go.
There just may not be an answer here and it’ll be another Anna Nicole. You can’t help people who won’t help themselves.
This! People on this site love to infantilize women they like and make villains out of women that they don’t care for. Brittany can be ill, in need of help and still do things that aren’t nice that cause chaos.
I just keep going back to the caption where she said that she knows her life looks perfect on Instagram… it’s so sad that that’s how she thinks she’s perceived. They say that celebrities often get frozen in time at the age they became rich and famous, and she absolutely seems like an (unwell) teenager rebelling and leaning into drugs and alcohol. It feels like it’s only a matter of time until something tragic happens.
molly, I agree. That has certainly been the pattern with vulnerable heiresses of the past, being taken advantage of by many hangers-on and con men. I hate that she’s so vulnerable in the first place. Her parents used her and never taught her the independence skills and good judgment which would see her through her very complicated life. But then, her fragility is what allowed them to use her all those years, so it worked for THEIR pocketbooks. I’d so hate to prey on my own child like that.
I’ve been ambivalent about Spears but this has all been tough to read about another human being (acknowledging she’s rich and can easily afford the support she so obviously needs but may never be able to acknowledge).
I have a legal background (was a lawyer) and followed her c’ship case closely. With all the professionals involved, who had their names on the line (from her court-appted attorney to her famous psych, who btw died suddenly a while back), I do not think she was being exploited by her father through the c’ship and I think the judges were fair in continuing it.
I think Britney is still very, very sick (I speculate she is very bipolar) but once the c’ship was lifted (I think only because of the media attention), no one could force her to take her meds. Staying in the c’ship probably kept her out of trouble, as horrible as it is for a grown woman nearing 40 to still be dictated to by her father and denied basic rights. In extreme cases, it is allowed by the law and in her case, I think she’d have died if her father hadn’t become her conservator back in the late noughties.. Her mother, I believe, only cares about the money or at least that was true earlier on. Britney is too much of a handful for her siblings who have their own lives. And the dad is probably worn out. He was the only one who stepped up and did the job that had to be done.
Her ex-fiance Jason Trawick gave an interview earlier this year or last year, whenever Britney and Sam got married, and he was quite vocal about her dad having good intentions. It’s a good read and he seemed 100% genuine.
Wow @Mocha, Britney needed help, not being a slave. She was very very sick, but her father put her into work as soon as he got conservatorship and full control of her life and finances. She was working more hours than normal people, she even worked on her birthday. There was a scene on her documentary that a group of people was deciding she was gonna work on her birthday. How was she so so sick, but not sick enough to make money for a lot of people? Everyone said, this kind of control is only for people who cannot function on their own; having mental health problems doesn’t mean you surrender all your life to a man even if it is your father. Can you imagine when a woman experience postpartum, she needs to surrender her life to her father / husband for decades without any due date?
Let’s be frank, this wouldn’t happen to a man. No one makes a serious argument a man should give up all the control of his life when he experiences mental health problems. Hell, Kanye is all over Italy, pants down with his new wife. I don’t see one person saying, he should be put into conservatorship and keys to be held by his wife.
Also, Britney said she was given drugs when she said no to performing or some dance moves. If you use modern medicine as a punishment, you cannot make an argument that this person shouldn’t have any reservations about doctors, drugs later on. She said she is going to therapy and trying to find medication right for her. That takes time, building trust, finding solutions to mental health problems. It is okay it takes some time. What is not okay is rewriting what her father or conservatorship did to her.
@ sevenblue
People have been saying for years that Kanye needs to be put under a conservatorship and wondering why he has not been on one. The problem with Kanye is that too many people benefit from his erratic behavior. No one care enough to get him help or that he would listen to besides his mom who has passed on.
I think you’re also for getting Michael Oher under a conservatorship without any mental health problems for the last 19 years.
@Coco, when Kanye first started behaving erratically, there was a conversation of conservatorship on SM. But, it is ended, noone is talking about it now even though he is in Italy with pants down in public. With Michael Oher, it is totally different case, we (public) didn’t know he was in conservatorship. With Michael, it was racism in modern times. A white family got the control of a black man’s life. No one is arguing that Michael should be in conservatorship. That’s what I am saying.
When it is reported that Britney did something weird, everyone starts to rewrite her abusive conservatorship and what her own family did to her. Still, I see a lot of people arguing she should be in some type of conservatorship. Her father was just trying to do good by making her work like long long hours? In her documentary, her young children were watching her practice in her custody time because she had to work. Her children couldn’t even spend quality time with her when they were little. This is not what conservatorship system is for. Women have been locked up in mental institutions for centuries, this is ingrained misogyny in our society that we regard a woman’s financial freedom and autonomy as a luxury that can be argued.
@ sevenblue
People are still talking about it any time someone post about Kanye behavior on social media or gossip blogs a conservatorship is brought up.
My point about Michael that he was still put under conservatorship when their was no reason for him to be placed under one to begin with. Michael had/has no mental health issues that would even suggest that he needs one.