- Kevin Federline claims his sons told him that his ex-wife, Britney Spears, would watch them sleep “with a knife in her hand” in his upcoming memoir.
- Spears responded to Federline’s book by accusing him of “profiting off her.”
- The rapper also says that the #FreeBritney movement needs to transform into a “‘Save Britney’ movement.”
Britney Spears is responding to her ex-husband Kevin Federline’s troubling allegations against her in his upcoming memoir, including that she allegedly watched their sons sleep “with a knife in her hand” sometimes.
“With news from Kevin’s book breaking, once again he and others are profiting off her and sadly it comes after child support has ended with Kevin,” a representative for Spears tells Entertainment Weekly in a statement. “All she cares about are her kids, Sean Preston and Jayden James and their well-being during this sensationalism. She detailed her journey in her memoir.” (Spears published her memoir The Woman in Me in 2023.)
Representatives for Federline did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment.
Federline, who was married to Spears from 2004 to 2007, accuses the “Toxic” singer of alarming behavior toward the ex-couple’s two sons in his upcoming memoir You Thought You Knew.
In excerpts from the book, which were published by The New York Times and confirmed by EW, Federline claims that Spears clutched a knife while watching their sons Sean and Jayden as they slept.
Gregg DeGuire/WireImage
“They would awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep — ‘Oh, you’re awake?’ — with a knife in her hand,” he alleges in his memoir. “Then she’d turn around and pad off without explanation.”
Elsewhere in the book, Federline reflects on Spears’ 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2008.
“It was one of the hardest nights of my life,” the musician recalls. “I felt sick over what she was going through. This was someone I had loved. Someone I had built a life with. The mother of my children.”
Federline was granted sole legal and physical custody of the two children following Spears’ psychiatric hold, which also led to the singer’s father, Jamie Spears, placing her under a temporary conservatorship that was later extended to be indefinite. The conservatorship ultimately ended in 2021 after a prolonged legal saga and public support for the #FreeBritney movement.
Kevin Mazur/WireImage
In his book, Federline says he believes that the movement to end Spears’ conservatorship “started from a good place,” but has jeopardized his ex-wife’s safety in the long run. “All those people who put so much effort into that,” he writes, “should now put the same energy into the ‘Save Britney’ movement. Because this is no longer about freedom. It’s about survival.”
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Later in the book, Federline opines that “it’s become impossible to pretend everything’s OK” for Spears. “This situation with Britney feels like it’s racing toward something irreversible,” he warns. “Now, more than ever, they need your support…I’ve been their buffer for years, but now it’s bigger than me. It’s time to sound the alarm.”
You Thought You Knew is set to release on Oct. 21.