Erin Lee Carr, the director of the 2021 Britney Spears documentary Britney vs Spears, has come to the singer’s defense amid criticism following her recent DUI arrest.
“Watching the way people are talking about Britney again feels painfully familiar,” Carr, 37, wrote via Instagram alongside a throwback photo of Spears, 44, on Monday, March 9.
Carr continued of the “Toxic” singer, “Not long ago, we collectively realized she had been living inside what many of us believed was an unjust conservatorship. A system where people around her were financially benefiting while she was being controlled. That was real. That mattered. And it took a massive public effort for the world to acknowledge it.”
The filmmaker pointed out that “recent events,” referring to Spears’ Wednesday, March 4, arrest for driving under the influence, “do not suddenly rewrite that history. They do not validate what was done to her.”
“Britney is a woman, a beautiful and [an] insanely talented woman, who has been through more than most of us could imagine while the entire world watched,” Carr wrote. “Maybe the lesson is not to swing from sympathy to judgment depending on the news cycle. Maybe the lesson is compassion.”
Carr concluded that she is “rooting” for Spears and “always” will be.
“And you should be too,” she added.
Carr’s film explored Spears’ yearslong fight for freedom from her conservatorship, which gave power over her financial, legal and business decisions to her father, Jamie, and a team of others. The conservatorship ended in November 2021 after 13 years.
Nearly five years after the conservatorship was terminated, Spears was arrested near her home in Ventura County, California, Us Weekly confirmed last week. The singer was taken into custody on Wednesday at 9:28 p.m. and reportedly sent to the hospital to test her blood alcohol content. She was then booked on Thursday, March 5, at 3:02 a.m. and released at 6:07 a.m.
“This was an unfortunate incident that is completely inexcusable,” Spears’ rep told Us. “Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law, and hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life. Hopefully, she can get the help and support she needs during this difficult time. Her boys are going to be spending time with her. Her loved ones are going to come up with an overdue, needed plan to set her up for success for well-being.”
Following Spears’ arrest, some fans have questioned whether the pop star’s conservatorship should have ended, with some calling for Spears to enter a new arrangement with a conservator.
In her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears opened up about how she felt during her conservatorship.
“I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child-robot. I had been so infantilized that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself,” she wrote. “The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
