Millie Bobby Brown has reiterated her desire to portray Britney Spears, but said it was not her story to tell.
The Stranger Things actor first spoke about potentially playing the pop star on screen in 2022. “I want to play a real person and I think for me, [it’s] Britney,” she explained.
Brown, who also rose to huge fame as a child, continued: “I think her story, first of all, resonates with me. Just growing up in the public eye watching her videos, watching interviews of how when she was younger.”
She added: “I feel like I could tell her story in the right way – and hers only.”
However, Spears was quick to shoot down the idea. “I hear about people wanting to do movies about my life … dude I’m not dead !!!” the singer wrote.
During a new interview with Access Hollywood, Brown revisited the idea of taking on the role of the ‘Toxic’ star.
“I mean, she is an absolute icon. I would love nothing more than to be a part of her story,” she said. “But that’s her story, and I am in full support of her bringing her story to life how she wants to.”
Last summer, Universal Pictures announced that Spears’ best-selling 2023 memoir The Woman In Me would serve as the basis for a new biopic about the pop star, with Jon M. Chu (Wicked, In The Heights, Crazy Rich Asians) attached as director.
Chu later said that teased that he had an “initial conception” of the story the forthcoming film would tell. “I think it’s a lot about how we treat people, young people, stars that we think we own, women, mothers,” he said.
The filmmaker added: “I cannot talk much about the Britney story other than I have been a Britney fan for many years […] She represents a generation of people growing up in the 2000s and late ‘90s, and she has a story that deserves to be told properly. There’s a lot about us in it.”
In September 2024, Spears caused confusion when she appeared to imply that the “secret project” she was working on with Chu was not a biopic of her life, but instead a “fictional musical”.
The Woman In Me shifted over one million copies worldwide in its first week.
The book contains numerous revelations in its candid discussion of Spears’ career, relationships, 13-year conservatorship and personal life. One of the most significant was that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake between 1998 to 2002 because he thought they “weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives” and were “way too young”.
Spears’ controversial conservatorship was terminated in November 2021. Her father, Jamie, had been suspended from his role as her conservator by a judge earlier that year.
In 2022, Millie Bobby Brown revealed that she’d be “down” to play Halsey in a biopic after the singer said she’d be “so great” for the role.
Meanwhile, Stranger Things fans were given a first look at the fifth and final season last year. The show marked the halfway point of production over the summer, before wrapping on its last-ever run of episodes in December.
