Bathing a 10-Year-Old, Coc*ine While Breastfeeding, and a Knife at the Door | Episode 84

Speaker 1 So I am a legal guardian to my brother. I have spent most of my life watching my brother and my father battle mental illness.

Speaker 1 I have spent more time in psychiatric hospital visiting hours than most people my age. And based on that, here is my take on Britney Spears' ex's new memoir.

Speaker 1 So Kevin Federlein is Britney Spears' ex-husband. He is also the father to her two sons, and he just released a memoir.

Speaker 1 It is titled You Thought You Knew by Kevin Federlein and this is basically him breaking his silence.

Speaker 1 He is telling his side of the story as the man who was married to Britney Spears and who has spent the better part of his life now raising their children. And Kevin Federlein, he used to be a rapper.

Speaker 1 People say he's a failed rapper, but now, to be honest, he is just known as her ex.

Speaker 1 He rose to even more fame and popularity by being married to her at the peak of her career, and he has now spent his life dealing with the aftermath of their marriage and her public breakdown and we're going to talk about this book today and the public reactions and whether or not i think they're valid now before we get into that if you want to stay up to date on all things brett cooper and the show make sure to go to brettcooper.com i have a couple new live shows on there i'm doing a show on november 5th so next week in new york city and then i have a show at zany's here in nashville on november 22nd they are super fun it's like a more high energy live version of the show i think it's super fun so you guys should come out and see one.

Speaker 1 All right, so let's dive into this story. I feel like my mood right now is just a bit more somber.
Maybe it's because it has been raining for like four straight days in Nashville.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's because the baby barely slept last night and I'm filming this at like 5 p.m. instead of midday until it literally is darker.
Or maybe it's just the

Speaker 1 content that we're diving into.

Speaker 1 But this story, as you guys probably know, based on my life, if you guys have, you know, watched any interviews with me or know this part of my story, a lot of what Kevin is talking about in this book, a lot of Brittany's story hits really close to home.

Speaker 1 And so these are stories that I enjoy talking about and I enjoy sharing this, even though it can often be painful. So I don't know, maybe that's why the mood is slower today.

Speaker 1 But anyway, we should just get into this. So there's a lot of press about Kevin's book, but I don't think there's a lot of people reading it.

Speaker 1 And I think that this is a fact because apparently this book did not even crack the top 500 on Amazon.

Speaker 1 One article reads, Devin Federlein's tell-all memoir you thought you knew was expected to draw major attention. Instead, it is tanked.

Speaker 1 According to Rob Schuster Substack, the book has failed to break into Amazon's top 500, even after an aggressive publicity push.

Speaker 1 A publishing insider told the outlet he thought shocking sales, that strategy fell flat. Public support remains firmly on Britney Spears' side.

Speaker 1 Now, a lot of people's negative opinions about Kevin, about this book, their refusal to even touch it or read it, is based in people's complete alliance and trust in the Free Brittany movement, resulting in people flat out just, you know, refusing to read the book.

Speaker 1 They don't want to hear these stories and they are painting him as the villain in her story.

Speaker 1 But regardless of your opinions on Britney Spears' conservatorship on the Free Brittany movement, I do think that his side of the story is worth hearing and is certainly worth telling because he's the father of her children.

Speaker 1 He has spent the last 19 years or more being part of her life.

Speaker 1 And the things that he shares in this book, if true, And that's a very important caveat, if true, would make it abundantly clear why Britney lost custody and why she was put in a conservatorship to begin with.

Speaker 1 And maybe people are not wanting to read the book. Maybe they're ignoring this fact because they have spent so much time investing in the Free Britney movement.
They don't want their opinion changed.

Speaker 1 I don't know, but I think it is worth diving into.

Speaker 1 I'm going to read you a few excerpts so that you don't have to go read the entire book because again, I think that his side of the story is worth telling.

Speaker 1 Now, this first part that I'm going to read is about something that happened at a party that took place at Paramount Studios.

Speaker 1 And so Kevin is saying he walked into this party, Brittany was already there. He walks in with his security guard, Big Mike, and he writes, Big Mike, not that Big Mike.
I know, guys. Anyway.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 And there they were. Brittany, her brother Brian, Jason Trowick, her agent at the time, and an actress who was about to blow up from a role that would transform her life.

Speaker 1 They were sitting around the coffee table in my dressing room. The first thing that I saw was Brittany and her young starlet friend snorting a fat line of Coke off the table.

Speaker 1 Both were wearing these outrageous wigs. Brittany's was electric blue.
It was surreal. They didn't even try to hide it.
Eddie was right there with me. Jamie, still outside, didn't see anything.

Speaker 1 He didn't want to know and wasn't sneaking any peeks, but he could sense that something was up. And Kevin goes on to explain that this was right around the time that their second son had been born.

Speaker 1 So they have two young children at home right now. Brittany's breastfeeding.
They are not using formula.

Speaker 1 And he walks in and he sees the mother of his children snoring Coke when his two sons are at home, expecting to be fed when she arrives at home.

Speaker 1 And so now he's pleading with her saying, please, you know, did you, did you save any milk? Do we need to get formula? Like you can't go home and feed them like this.

Speaker 1 And so the common thread in this book with the stories that Kevin is telling is that almost all of the ones that he shares involve their children.

Speaker 1 That seems to be Kevin's primary concern and the thing that he wanted to share more than anything, probably in my opinion, to dispel the public idea that he and Brittany's father, Jamie, were in cahoots to take her money and control her life and take her kids away purely, just simply to exploit her, when, according to him and according to her father and many people around her, it was for the safety of her and their family.

Speaker 1 Like, I mean, take this story. He writes, Then came the stories that shook me to my core.
The ones that I didn't hear until the boys stopped seeing her.

Speaker 1 They would awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep. Oh, you're awake, she would say, with a knife in her hand.

Speaker 1 Then she'd turn around and pat off without explanation. Creepy as fuck.
Other nights, they'd wake to the sound of her screaming bloody murder or smashing things in the house.

Speaker 1 All of this terrified them.

Speaker 1 I literally get chills because we're going to talk about this later, but I just get flashbacks to the things that I experienced as a kid in a, you know, in a very dysfunctional family and household.

Speaker 1 So I'm just empathizing with her, her children here. He goes on, here's another story.
He says, then there were the stories that the boys shared as they got older.

Speaker 1 Preston once told me that she had punched him in the face. I used to do every interview back then with a smile, keeping things light, always saying we're doing great, always protecting her.

Speaker 1 But maybe that was a mistake. Maybe the truth needed to come out because covering it up didn't help her, and it definitely didn't help the boys.

Speaker 1 And the hardest thing to admit now is that the truth was always there staring me in the face and I didn't want to see it. I felt like I was the only one truly looking out for them.

Speaker 1 And I know that that's not entirely true. Jamie loves the boys and I know that Brittany loves them too.

Speaker 1 But love doesn't erase the trauma that they endured or the bad decisions that affected their lives. And there's no telling how much more happened that I don't even know about.

Speaker 1 Now, later in the book, some of the other stories that Kevin shared were things like the fact that Brittany would allegedly repeatedly feed her sons food that she knew they were allergic to, or one of her sons was forced to be around horses with her, even though she knew that he was severely allergic.

Speaker 1 Another one of her sons was hospitalized after getting into pills. And Kevin alludes to the fact that they were possibly Britney's pills that she was taking.
Like these stories are just awful.

Speaker 1 And I am just scratching the surface of what was in this book. And according to Kevin, for years, for their entire childhood, he tried to keep all of this offline.

Speaker 1 and he even shared this opinion with the boys, this, you know, this message of we need to keep things private. And he wrote, Preston, one of their sons, told me how a fan went after him online.

Speaker 1 This person, a free Britney militant, was pressuring him to support his mom publicly. And in frustration, Preston told him the things that he'd experienced.

Speaker 1 He said that she'd hit him, threatened him with a knife, acted violently and dangerously. He was only 16 then.

Speaker 1 And I remember telling him not to air out personal stuff online, but that's what blew the lid off the nice situation, how I first learned about Britney's disturbing behavior.

Speaker 1 And it made me wonder how I'd missed it for so long.

Speaker 1 For years, I had been under the impression that things were stable enough, but then I realized as time went on that the damage was too deep to repair and the situation was more complex and fractured than I'd realized.

Speaker 1 And in that situation, he's talking about, you know, their time under the conservatorship, where he thought things were getting better, that she was more under control, that she was doing better.

Speaker 1 And he learned from his sons that, you know, that was not the case whatsoever. And according to Kevin, the boys were ready for this story to be told.

Speaker 1 This is what he said in an Entertainment Tonight interview.

Speaker 2 My children are ready for me to tell my story because it's not just my story, right? This affects everybody in my family. My kids, my wife, even my exes.

Speaker 1 And he's right. He does have a story here to tell.
Her sons have a story here to tell. And so maybe, maybe this is what they needed in order to start the healing process.

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Speaker 1 Now, as you're going to see later in this this episode, it is more difficult than ever to know who to trust and where to look.

Speaker 1 And I think the Ground News is one of the most powerful tools tackling this. Now, as you guys know, I'm very intentional about who I choose to partner with.

Speaker 1 So when I talk about Ground News, it is for a reason.

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Speaker 1 Their app and website pull in the world's perspective on today's biggest issues. So you see what facts are being covered and what biases are influencing both.

Speaker 1 And probably the clearest example of this is their blind spot feed where you can see the stories that both the the left and the right are suppressing.

Speaker 1 And this is why I have partnered with Ground News to get you full access to the truth for 40% off.

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Speaker 1 Now, getting back into things, to be clear, No one seems to buy Kevin's story at all. I mean, he is being ripped to shreds online basically in every single corner of the internet right now.

Speaker 1 He's obviously being ripped apart by the Britney fandom, but also it's not just that.

Speaker 1 Like basically every single interview that he has done in promotion of this book has been critical with journalists basically playing the offense on Britney's behalf.

Speaker 1 And the public seems to have overwhelmingly taken her side in all of this. And to be honest, they do have a good reason to be skeptical.

Speaker 1 They have a good reason to take her side because the timing of this book is interesting. We do have to admit that because their youngest son just turned 18 years old.
And what does that mean?

Speaker 1 Well, child support money has run out. The tens of thousands of dollars that Kevin was getting every single month, poof, they no longer exist.

Speaker 1 He does not have a career really other than being her ex and raising her children. He has no power or control or involvement in her life anymore.

Speaker 1 And coincidentally, now is the time that he chooses to write a tell-all book and people simply are not buying it.

Speaker 1 Like, for example, he did an interview with Pierce Morgan last week and these were some of the comments. Again, these are not from like the Britney stands on X.
One person said narcissist.

Speaker 1 Another person said he is speaking out because his money has been cut off. He wants his kids to get control of her fortune so he can get her money.
Another person said the kids are 18 and 19.

Speaker 1 They are adults. Is this because he's no longer entitled to his mother's payments? And then these are some of the comments underneath that Entertainment Tonight interview.

Speaker 1 One person said, almost had me until he said that his money stopped a year ago. Another person said, there's a very big difference in telling your story and selling a story.

Speaker 1 Another commenter said, he says that he hasn't talked to her in years. So how has he tried everything to help her? Writing a book is definitely not going to help her.

Speaker 1 And then the last comment I'll read is, Brittany has been exploited by everyone, including her own family. And that one right there is not something that I'm going to argue with.

Speaker 1 I think that it is a universal truth at this point that Brittany has been exploited. And that's why people are on the defensive.

Speaker 1 That's why they don't trust Kevin, especially after the conservatorship, especially after the, you know, prevailing success of the pre-Britney movement.

Speaker 1 Like, obviously, people are going to be skeptical, especially considering the timing.

Speaker 1 And based on all of this, specifically the timing, I could be persuaded that this is what is happening and this is why he published the book at this certain time.

Speaker 1 And I'm sure that it's painful for her to see these stories out in the open. And I know that that is why her team is doing damage control.
control.

Speaker 1 They are the ones that put it out there that, you know, he's only doing this because the child support money has run out. And maybe some of these stories are exaggerations.

Speaker 1 Maybe they're white lies, like she said, maybe they're completely false. We have no idea.
It's all he said, she said at this point.

Speaker 1 But what I want to end with here is that in my opinion, as somebody who has been in this situation before, unfortunately, is that the book does seem fair.

Speaker 1 But most people are just not going to take the time to read it because stories of Brittany's behavior aside, it does seem like Kevin has a common sense take on the situation that his family is in, something nuanced that is very difficult to understand if you haven't been in something like this yourself, which I feel like most of the free Britney fandom and stans and the Britney fans haven't been in.

Speaker 1 And that's not, you know, to attack them at all. It's just something that is incredibly painful and incredibly nuanced, incredibly complicated.
And I feel like that's what he's trying to share here.

Speaker 1 For example, he wrote, the conservatorship brought stability when it was desperately needed, but it came at a cost for everyone. He's not saying that this was the perfect situation.

Speaker 1 He's not saying that this is like the best thing that ever happened to Britney.

Speaker 1 He's being open about the fact that a conservatorship, a guardianship, it's not perfect, but sometimes it is simply what needs to be done. He said, and I understand why people questioned it.

Speaker 1 It is easy to judge when you're not living it, but the cycle hasn't stopped. It's been the same, highs and lows, year after year.

Speaker 1 Jamie Spears took on the role because he believed it was the only way to save his daughter's life.

Speaker 1 In the beginning, I could see the fear and the emotional toll that the situation caused him and her family. As a parent, I couldn't imagine how devastating it must have been for him and Lynn.

Speaker 1 As an ex-husband, I can't imagine how difficult it was for Britney to be under the control of her father as an adult.

Speaker 1 Maybe things would have gone smoother if Jamie had handed off the conservatorship to a professional much earlier. I'm not going to get into what-ifs or conspiracy theories.

Speaker 1 Time and time again in the book, He does not say that Jamie was a perfect father, a perfect conservator.

Speaker 1 He also doesn't say whether he knows if her team was helping her or using her and hurting her by continuing to have her work and tour and perform, especially in Vegas.

Speaker 1 He like leaves all of that up for discussion. Like he genuinely does seem like he wants people to understand that it was not a perfect situation.

Speaker 1 And all of this reminded me of a comment that I saw earlier today.

Speaker 1 This guy who's a Britney fan, obviously, by his profile picture, says, Britney needed the conservatorship, but her father wasn't the right conservator.

Speaker 1 People can never explain why they think she needed a conservatorship because she shaved her head. Like, huh? Okay, so obviously this guy is tweeting about people like me.

Speaker 1 I mean, and I did an entire episode talking about Britney, talking about conservatorships, talking about the mental health, you know, systems in the United States.

Speaker 1 I feel like this was perfectly on my algorithm and directed at me.

Speaker 1 And first of all, I would say, I think that you are being, you know, intentionally obtuse by saying like, oh, it's only because she shaved her head. Like, no, we have all seen her social media.

Speaker 1 We have all heard the stories. We have seen the videos.
We saw the testimonies. We understand what got her to that conservatorship.
And you are, you know, intentionally ignoring it.

Speaker 1 And maybe, just maybe, this is what Kevin is now trying to explain from an insider's perspective.

Speaker 1 Like, if all of this is honest and true, if these stories are legit, if she does not come out swinging with a defamation lawsuit, which by the way, she should, if all of these are lies, he's probably trying to explain to the world what got them here.

Speaker 1 Which is also probably why he talks about the dangers of the Free Brittany movement at large, something that I also talked about earlier this year, and the fact that it lacked insight into their personal lives and what a conservatorship done right actually meant for them.

Speaker 1 He said, the Free Britney movement seemed more focused on Brittany the pop icon, free our queen, I used to hear all the time, than the actual person behind the fame.

Speaker 1 At times, it felt more like a fandom's mob mentality than a genuine concern for Britney's well-being. But the movement kept growing until it became a force to be reckoned with.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I believe the pressure from the Free Britney movement led the judge to ignore the professional reports and caved public opinion, especially with her own election on the line.

Speaker 1 But none of that truly mattered in the end.

Speaker 1 If Brittany believed that she was being held against her will and everything else she shared since, then that trauma is real for her, and you can't ignore that.

Speaker 1 Like, this does not seem like a man who hates his ex, who is out to get Britney.

Speaker 1 He's acknowledging, like, if this genuinely is what she believed in her current mental state, then obviously that's going to be traumatic.

Speaker 1 Obviously, that's going to be awful for anybody who is involved in this. Like, whether it's genuine or not, I am inclined to believe maybe that it's genuine.
Like regardless, he is expressing care.

Speaker 1 Like this does not seem like a man who is exploiting his ex. I don't know.
Like he also writes, I have lost faith that things will ever turn around.

Speaker 1 This is probably the part of the book that just like, oh, hit me like a ton of bricks, but I still hope that Brittany can find peace.

Speaker 1 Whatever her future holds, I hope it's one where she can finally take control of her own life on her own terms. This whole saga, 20 years of it, was built on denial.

Speaker 1 Brittany never reached the first step of recovery, admitting that there was a problem. Not then, not now, not ever.
I mean, if you've seen her posts, she's still not saying anything was wrong.

Speaker 1 And without that, nothing could truly change. Not the conservatorship, not Jamie stepping in, not anything else.
If you don't think you need help, you'll never accept it.

Speaker 1 From the bathroom incident with Jaden to reckless choices like partying when she was supposed to be parenting, it was always somebody else's fault. She didn't think that she had a drug problem.

Speaker 1 She didn't think that there was anything wrong with the decisions that she made. That refusal to take responsibility is the root of everything that has gone wrong.
And gosh, like that's so harsh.

Speaker 1 Like I'm sure sure that is awful for her to read, but like, that is, that's what radical personal responsibility is. These are the consequences of somebody not taking accountability in their life.

Speaker 1 And obviously, again, I feel like I need to acknowledge my biases here because, like, maybe I have this opinion because I feel like I could have written this book myself about my own life that I've lived in my dysfunctional family and the experiences that I've had that are eerily similar to a lot of what he's writing here.

Speaker 1 You know, the heartbreak of being hurt by the people that you love most in the world, the people that you should be able to trust more than anyone, how cutting people off, even though people on the outside might think that it is, you know, cruel and, you know, cold-hearted is sometimes the only option at certain times.

Speaker 1 How somebody's refusal to take responsibility time and time again. genuinely just like wrecks everything.
Like, unfortunately, that is just the truth.

Speaker 1 And most importantly here, how there are multiple sides to every single one of these stories.

Speaker 1 And that a lot of the times the narrator in these situations is unstable or unreliable or just too biased or too hurt.

Speaker 1 Like I'm sure that the story that I would tell about my brother if I were ever to write anything or my dad is probably far different than the one that either of them has in their brains.

Speaker 1 And that is okay. Like that like unfortunately that is just the reality of the situation.
So I don't think it's helpful to pick sides in this story when none of us have ever been in these rooms.

Speaker 1 Like I'm sure that Kevin is writing this from a place of hurt, of you know, protecting his sons, of being angry about the things that they've had to experience for the last 20 years.

Speaker 1 And I'm sure that Brittany is wanting to ignore the fact that maybe any of this happened.

Speaker 1 She's wanting to protect her own reputation and she feels that she has been locked in a situation outside of her control for years and years and years.

Speaker 1 All of those experiences are real and the truth is somewhere there in the center. Like again, there is no doubt in my mind that Brittany was taken advantage of and that she broke down.

Speaker 1 There is no doubt in my mind that she loves her kids and wants to be with them and wanted to have a relationship with them. But I also don't doubt that her kids and Kevin have put walls up.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've been there. I did that.

Speaker 1 I don't doubt that people have tried to protect them or help her and that she sees that as betrayal because unfortunately, that is just the pattern in these situations.

Speaker 1 I say all of this and I do this episode to say that this is an incredibly complex situation.

Speaker 1 I have no idea if Kevin is writing this book from a genuine place of wanting the truth to be out there, of wanting to help his kids heal, of wanting to set the record straight.

Speaker 1 I have no idea if it's just a muddy grab, but whatever the truth is, I just pray for all of their peace.

Speaker 1 I pray for her health and her happiness and for the relationship that she wants to have with her kids because at the end of the day, that is simply the most important thing.