The Hulu/FX documentary The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears reignited the #FreeBritney movement when it came out back in February, but Britney herself didn’t seem to be a fan.
In an Instagram post last month, the singer wrote in part, “I didn’t like the way the documentaries bring up humiliating moments from the past.”
Framing Britney Spears director Samantha Stark tells Billboard she doesn’t blame Britney for feeling that way.
“While we were making the film, we talked a lot about re-traumatizing Britney and her family by showing these moments,” Stark says. “Part of the reason it’s called Framing Britney Spears is there are these still-photo frames that were humiliating to her.”
Stark continues, “We thought it was really important to pull outside the frame because so many people had all these assumptions based on one frame, one still image that they saw. In the end, we felt like we had to put some of them in because we wanted people to have more context.”
Stark concedes that Britney “100 percent deserves to be mad that we’re still looking at those photos, because it’s ridiculous that we’re still looking at them, and they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“As much as I want to explain myself to her, I totally understand where she’s coming from,” she says.
The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears received two Emmy nominations: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program.
And in Britney conservatorship news, People reports Britney’s lawyer Mathew Rosengart filed a motion for an “immediate suspension” of her father Jamie Spears as conservator of her estate before her next court hearing on September 29.
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