Britney Spears’ fiancé, Sam Asghari, hopes Netflix documentary will be ‘respectful’
Sam Asghari has high expectations for Netflix’s forthcoming documentary about Britney Spears, his new fiancée, despite other recent films leaving “a bad after taste” in his mouth.
The actor, 27, took to Instagram to express his distaste for previous Spears documentaries and his hopes for the streaming giant’s new one coming out Tuesday. Asghari, who has recurring role on the Showtime series “Black Monday,” got engaged to the “Lucky” singer, 39, earlier this month after dating for nearly five years.
“Apparently my opinion has increased in value over last few days,” Asghari quipped Friday on his Instagram story. “Past docs left bad after taste. Im hopeful this one will be respectful. I dont blame CNN , BBC or Netflix (which got me thru lockdowns) for airing them because, as an actor i tell other peoples stories too.
“I question producers who made them ‘just to shed light’ without input or approval from subject. Any credit for light being shed should go to” the #FreeBritney movement.
The singer announced the news on Instagram on Sunday, just days after father Jamie Spears petitioned a court to end her 13-year conservatorship.
Netflix dropped the trailer for “Britney vs Spears” last week, teasing a preview of the highly anticipated, top-secret project about the musician‘s ongoing conservatorship battle. It arrives months after the February release of “Framing Britney Spears,” FX and Hulu’s buzzy deep dive into the “...Baby One More Time” hitmaker’s rapid rise and the toxic media circus that followed.
(On Friday, FX released “Controlling Britney Spears,” an unexpected sequel that more closely examines the circumstances of her conservatorship, which has long limited Spears’ personal, medical and financial autonomy.)
Directed by Erin Lee Carr, Netflix’s take on Spears’ legal woes prefaces the next hearing in her conservatorship case, which could finally see her father removed as her conservator after 13 years.
The director behind a secret Netflix project about Britney Spears talks about the pop star’s conservatorship ahead of her film’s Sept. 28 debut.
“I have never been on such an evolving story,” Carr recently told The Times. “It was a complete 24/7 job, and it was wild because the story kept changing. I found it to be incredibly overwhelming, but in a way, it was like the story was finally opening up. ...
“To be a documentary filmmaker that was following the story as it was breaking open felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity, though I had trouble sleeping.”
Shortly after “Framing Britney Spears” debuted on FX and Hulu, Spears said that she was “embarrassed” by it and that she “cried for two weeks.” Carr told The Times she hopes “Britney vs Spears” will have a more positive effect on its subject, who declined to participate in the film.
“Controlling Britney Spears,” the follow-up to “Framing Britney Spears,” focuses on Black Box, the security firm hired to protect — and surveil — the pop star.
“[In making the film I] was trying to not be another person to trespass on her privacy again and again,” Carr said. “But she wants to get out of the conservatorship, so therefore we should know what is going on inside it.
“I specifically made the creative decision that we were not going to utilize the same imagery that she has said before is traumatizing. The incidents that happened in 2007 during one of the episodes at the hospital — you’re never going to see those.”
Tonight another TV special, “Toxic: Britney Spears’ Battle for Freedom,” will premiere on CNN — likely also timed to her upcoming hearing, scheduled for Wednesday in Los Angeles.
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