Jamie Lynn Spears has gotten candid about the criticism she faced when she became pregnant when she was 15 years old.
The former Nickelodeon star opened up on Hannah Brown’s Better Tomorrow podcast, disclosing the difficulties that erupted when she found out she was going to have a baby. Spears, now 32, continued her lead role on the famed series Zoey 101 for a few months before deciding to leave the show in light of her pregnancy. However, at the time, she kept her baby news private, giving birth to her daughter Maddie out of public view.
Spears discussed the public exit in her memoir, Things I Should Have Said, which came out last year. She explained that she and her mother Lynne went to a secluded cabin in Mississippi to stay after she told her parents about the pregnancy and refused to get an abortion several times.
Spears’ parents allegedly begged her to not have the baby or give her up for adoption, but she didn’t listen, and ended up being “banished” to a location she said she can’t recall now. Spears said she was forced to follow strict rules when she was in isolation, including keeping her sister Britney Spears in the dark.
The Sweet Magnolias star also recalled how her relationship with her father was ruined. “They took my smartphone away, fearing the news would get out, and insisted that no one share any information with anyone, especially the press. My daddy and I stopped speaking and the tension was terrible,” she disclosed in her book.
Spears compared the time in her life to being in prison, adding how her team “went so far as hiding my pregnancy from my sister, claiming, ‘It’s too risky to tell Britney about the baby.’ I needed her more than ever and she wasn’t able [to] help me in my most vulnerable time”.
However, Spears recalled how she’d found little joys amid the adversity. “I think being in a small town and going into a store [where the clerk] who’s checking you out doesn’t care about who you are, what you’re doing or who’s taking your picture, she’s trying to get home to her kids,” she noted to Brown on the podcast. “Interacting with people like that on a daily basis makes you have a much different outlook whenever a newspaper writes a bad headline about you that’s not true. Like, you know what, that doesn’t matter. These are the people that matter.”
Thinking about her future, Spears admitted she had considered filing for emancipation because her parents wouldn’t allow her to move out after she gave birth. However, upon further contemplation, she prioritised the Spears reputation and felt as though she would draw more negative attention to them if she did.
During the podcast appearance, Spears addressed her decision to stop filming Zoey 101, confessing it was a choice that made sense for her. “That was something I took responsibility for the way that made sense for me,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense for everyone else, but it made sense for me and the whole world came down and told me I was the worst human alive for doing so and that every young girl who ever watched my show was going to be ruined because of me and my personal decision.”
Spears gave birth to Maddie, now 15, in June of 2018 with ex-boyfriend Casey Aldrige. The All That star now shares her second daughter Ivey Joan, five, with her husband Jamie Watson. As a mother to two girls, Spears told Brown she wants to be a role model and protect them from the experiences she had.
“I look at both my children [and think] at least at that age I was in the business because I did it and I loved it. I was putting myself out there, but my children truly are not,” Spears noted. “That is what their mom does, so anytime that I feel that I’ve exposed them in any way, you feel tremendous guilt. I try to protect them in every way that I can, but I also try to defend them in every way that I can.”
Now, Spears is resurrecting her beloved character Zoey Brooks in the Paramount + Film’s reboot movie Zoey 102, premiering on 27 July.
When speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Spears said she couldn’t believe she got the opportunity to finish Zoey’s storyline. “It’s like I have to pinch myself because it’s something we’ve worked on really hard for years to get, being patient to make sure it’s right, putting the right things in place. And then it’s like a dream come true,” she said. “It’s this thing you’ve been talking about and working on and trying to bring to life.”
