Brian Friedman has revealed that he received multiple death threats from Britney Spears’ fans while he was working with her.
In a new BBC documentary called The Battle for Britney: Fans, Cash and a Conservatorship, journalist Mobeen Azhar visits Brian in Los Angeles to chat about his time working with the pop star.
Brian, 43, first worked with Britney in 1999 when she performed Baby One More Time at the Grammy Awards.
Speaking to Mobeen, Brian said: “Then there was a gap before I saw her again, but after that gap I was with her for a huge chunk of life.”
Asked if he got to know the real Britney, Brian replied: “It was impossible not to know Britney because she was not a pop persona, she is normal as can be.
“She never talked about her fame, it was almost like it didn’t exist, that you can be sitting with the biggest star on the planet and they don’t think of themselves or act like that.”
Brian worked with Britiney on her hit 2001 single I’m a Slave 4 U and said it was his “first bout of choreography”.
“It was just one of those landmark moments for me and my career,” Brian explained, as clips from the seriously sexy music video played on the screen.
Brian also shared some personal photographs of him and Britney, and said: “That looked like us on any night of the week at that time, we were in our heyday, we were going out, we were having a good time.”
Discussing the moment he decided to stop working for Britney, Brian said: “I was getting a lot of pressure from her fanbase.
“I did an interview on MTV when we were working on Hold It Against Me and I said something to the likes of, ‘she’s a mother now so she’s dancing differently’.
“When I said this statement her fans came after me hard. I was getting death threats,” he continued.
“Death threats?” Mobeen asked, to which Brian replied: “Multiple death threats, weekly and it got to the point where people were saying they were driving by my house waiting for me to step outside.
“And that to me was no longer fun and I decided to bow out gracefully, I wished Britney the best and said, ‘good luck on this project, it’s just not right for me to be here anymore’, and I then walked away and my ulcer went away!” he added.
Speaking about how Britney dealt with fame, Brian revealed: “She did not love having to lose her anonymity. She would be stopped non stop, fans don’t really understand. Then you have the flip side of it that’s difficult to deal with and that’s the paparazzi.
“After you’ve been going non-stop for five or six years on the road and travelling and working and recording, interviews, and photo shoots, it takes a toll,” Brian added.
The last time Brian saw Britney was when he went to watch her perform in Las Vegas, and they had the chance to catch up backstage.
“Nothing has ever been the magic that it was back in our heyday, but we have our own lives, she lives with her boyfriend and I live with my husband and maybe some day we’ll get to hang out and see each other again, who knows what’s on the horizon.”
Elsewhere in the documentary, Mobeen talks to hardcore Britney fans who are part of the #FreeBritney movement who believe the singer has been put under a conservatorship for all the wrong reasons.