--- title: Britney Spears On Diane Sawyer Interview: 'a Breaking Point' description: In her new memoir, The Woman in Me, Britney Spears writes that she was pressured by her father to do the interview with Diane Sawyer. canonical: https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/ author: Laura Zornosa article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-10-19T21:32:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:48.732Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Britney Spears Slams Diane Sawyer Interview og:description: In her new memoir, Britney Spears says her interview with Diane Sawyer was "a breaking point." og:url: https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc2bfc04e9d1b71b/698a416386f68e0a936f2de5/GettyImages-133197451.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2003 - Backstage og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Britney Spears Slams Diane Sawyer Interview twitter:description: In her new memoir, Britney Spears says her interview with Diane Sawyer was "a breaking point." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc2bfc04e9d1b71b/698a416386f68e0a936f2de5/GettyImages-133197451.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Britney Spears Says Her Diane Sawyer Interview Was 'a Breaking Point' > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: 'Crossroads' Director Reflects on Britney Spears and Impact of the Movie [Watch (HLS stream): 'Crossroads' Director Reflects on Britney Spears and Impact of the Movie](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fBL9ZckL.m3u8) (3:41)  _Published 2023-10-19. The movie "Crossroads" returns to theaters on Oct. 23 and 25 for a special fan event to accompany the release of Spears' memoir, The Woman in Me._  by [Laura Zornosa](https://time.com/author/laura-zornosa/)  ## Laura Zornosa Laura Zornosa is a reporter at TIME. Oct 19, 2023 9:32 PM UTC  Britney Spears backstage at the Staples Center during KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2003. Britney Spears backstage at the Staples Center during KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2003. Bryan Linden—WireImage  by [Laura Zornosa](https://time.com/author/laura-zornosa/)  ## Laura Zornosa Laura Zornosa is a reporter at TIME. Oct 19, 2023 9:32 PM UTC In 2003, shortly after the release of her fourth album, _In the Zone_—and on the heels of her high-profile breakup with Justin Timberlake—Britney Spears sat down for an interview with journalist Diane Sawyer. In her new memoir, _The Woman in Me_, a copy of which was obtained by TIME ahead of its Oct. 24 release, Spears writes that she was pressured by her father and told she was going to do the interview. She felt exploited, embarrassed, and exposed, she says. “It was completely humiliating,” Spears writes. “I wasn’t told what the questions would be ahead of time, and it turned out they were 100 percent embarrassing. I was too vulnerable then, too sensitive, to do this type of interview.” In the two decades since the interview, many have reckoned with the high-scrutiny celebrity culture of the 2000s—especially involving young women. And more recently, the interview has had a resurgence [on TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/discover/brittany-spears-interview-diane-sawyer), with viewers criticizing its tone and content. In the book, Spears shares that the breakup with Timberlake—initiated by him suddenly via text—devastated her and left her in a state of shock. She still had tour dates left in her contract, so she went back to work, but in hindsight, she wasn’t ready. **Read More:** [_Britney Spears Reveals How She Feels About the #FreeBritney Movement_](https://time.com/6325910/britney-spears-memoir-free-britney/) “I didn’t want to share anything private with the world,” Spears writes. “I didn’t owe the media details of my breakup. I shouldn’t have been forced to speak on national TV, forced to cry in front of this stranger, a woman who was relentlessly going after me with harsh question after harsh question. Instead, I felt like I had been exploited, set up in front of the whole world.” [During the interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyI6PTuLYgw) Sawyer was intense, probing, and critical. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she narrates in a voiceover, “the most valuable square inch of real estate in the entertainment universe.” The accompanying footage is a montage of close-up shots of Spears’ navel. “That interview was a breaking point for me internally—a switch had been flipped,” Spears writes. “I felt something dark come over my body. I felt myself turning, almost like a werewolf, into a Bad Person.” The lyrics of Timberlake’s latest album at the time, _Justified_, seemed to point the finger at Britney, and rumors swirled that she had cheated on him. (In _The Woman in Me_, Spears writes that he had cheated on her multiple times, and she had made out with a choreographer in retaliation.) This was the crux of the Sawyer interview. “You did something that caused him so much pain,” she told Spears. “So much suffering. What did you do?” ### More From TIME Sawyer critiqued Spears’ perceived raciness, told the audience that she bit her nails, and pressed the singer on whether she had ever “gone further” than she wished she had. The journalist said that Spears was “constantly feeding the publicity monster” and seeking attention. “I honestly feel like that moment in my life should have been a time for growing—and not sharing everything with the world,” she continues. “It would have been the better way to heal. But I had no choice. It seemed like nobody really cared how I felt.” ## Transcript Well, I'm super excited because they're up until now, there was a time that you couldn't get to see the movie and I was like, I'd have people be like, all I've trying to watch Crossroads, and, you know, and you can get it. And so one, I'm just so excited that it's going to be made available again cuz they, they Yap. So, I'm super excited about that. So, that makes me a super excited and then be it's like, you know, you I've had a career that's lasted a long time, which I'm so grateful about and, you know, you do things in the moment and it's wonderful and then you move on and you keep doing things and I'm just so, you know, whatever. I can't believe that how, you know, the success I've had, but sometimes you have to wait a little while so Oh yeah, it was written by Shonda Rhimes. This is her first feature. You know, she is our first feature film. And, and I to me, I think you're seeing the, you know, I'm a master Storyteller. Who knows how to tell a story is complicated, female, stories. And she when you watch the film you really see like we were dealing with some really serious elements that you know at the time and and even now like and I feel like this movie really was, it was made for girls by girls. I found the that style of acting like she'll be called a bad actor. She acts like a Disney actress in this movie with people like Zoe Saldana, Taryn, Manning and Anson Mount like super good, like, solid actors that have grounded performances, isn't that are very realistic. So, Michael with Britney was not to get her to act. I hung out with her enough to where I could figure out who the real Britt. Was cuz at the time she was like super star, but there was a part of her where she was the authentic person. And that's the person that if I could get that person on camera than she wasn't acting. I would really be getting her the essence of her. And that's what I was always trying to get when I would work with her. To read Britney's book and see what she says about making Crossroads. I know, I know I can't wait, I did talk to the. I know the woman that I know the publisher, she shouldn't tell me what's in it, but she did tell me that there is she talks about it in the title of the book is kind of based on a Crossroads and it was Britney after me trying for what? I don't know how many years, five years to get this movie released and told her you would listen to me one phone call from Britney got the movie released. She was the one that got the saint released really cold up. She found out that it's not available Paramount. Didn't renew their license for some reason and she called Stoney and Sony picked up the option to it. And did, this was her wasn't me, wasn't my lawyers wasn't Sean. It was Britney, it's really beautiful in like when she's sitting on the bed in the opening scene and like her dad and she's talking about going to the prom and and that she miss. Out on all those things, you never had a chance to do all the that's really her talking and real emotion from her coming from, she didn't have that experience. You didn't get to lately that Teenage life and have go to prom and go to parties or any of that. So, like, I knew that if just even right at the very beginning, if I could ground her performance into stuff that was authentic and she could find a real place for her dinner, then I felt like I would I was getting a performance I wanted from her. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/"},"headline":"Britney Spears Says Her Diane Sawyer Interview Was 'a Breaking Point'","datePublished":"2023-10-19T21:32:45.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:48.732Z","description":"In her new memoir, Britney Spears says her interview with Diane Sawyer was \"a breaking point.\"","url":"https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc2bfc04e9d1b71b/698a416386f68e0a936f2de5/GettyImages-133197451.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Laura Zornosa","jobTitle":"Laura Zornosa is a reporter at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/laura-zornosa/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc2bfc04e9d1b71b/698a416386f68e0a936f2de5/GettyImages-133197451.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2003 - Backstage","caption":"KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2003 - Backstage","creditText":"Bryan Linden—WireImage","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/","name":"Britney Spears Says Her Diane Sawyer Interview Was 'a Breaking Point'"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"'Crossroads' Director Reflects on Britney Spears and Impact of the Movie","description":"The movie \"Crossroads\" returns to theaters on Oct. 23 and 25 for a special fan event to accompany the release of Spears' memoir, The Woman in Me.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/fBL9ZckL/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-10-19T21:07:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fBL9ZckL.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/","duration":"PT3M41S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6326142/britney-spears-diane-sawyer-interview-memoir/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```