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AJ McLean says Britney Spears' conservatorship is 'grotesque': 'The last time I saw her it broke my heart'

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 7/15/21

AJ McLean rose to stardom as a member of Backstreet Boys around the same time Britney Spears began her iconic climb, but he has an even closer perspective than their mirroring careers.

"She's pretty much my neighbor," McLean told Andy Cohen while appearing on SiriusXM with fellow Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. "She doesn't live very far from me. I see her often. ... The last time I saw her, it broke my heart. The last time I saw her, she was with a gentleman. I'm assuming it was security and/or maybe a driver because I know based on her words, which I do believe 100 percent, she's not allowed to drive herself. She can't do anything. Like, literally. She can't do anything."

McLean explained that he and Spears frequent the same cupcake shop around their neighborhood. On this particular day, his wife had asked him to go to the cupcake shop to get pastries for a birthday party. At first, he said, Spears looked at him and "had this glass face, like she just didn't know who was there." She eventually recognized him and gave him a hug.

"But I could just see that this wasn't her," the 43-year-old added. "Like, I'm not looking at the person I knew from years and years ago. And I know a lot of that, in my opinion, could be whatever they're keeping her on or whatever they have her on, which is just insane. It's not fair."

This specific anecdote came after Cohen asked Carter and McLean for their thoughts on their "old friend" Spears as she continues to legally battle to remove her father as her conservator and, more recently, petition to end her nearly 13-year conservatorship altogether.

These were McLean's initial remarks:

"I can tell you right now that my thoughts and my prayers are with her. I am 100 percent Team Britney. I've said this to a few friends recently that back in the beginning of this whole conservatorship, when everything happened about 13 years ago, I could kind of empathize in that moment maybe with her family, with how things transpired. But for it to go on this long, I think, is absolutely asinine. I think it's insane. I think it is completely brutal.

"The one thing that she shared that really, really irks me is the whole IUD situation. I mean, that, to me, is physical abuse. Just the whole thing, to me, is just—it's grotesque. And I pray for her. I really feel in my heart that she is going to break free of all of this, and I really hope that she does. She's a sweetheart."

Spears gave a 24-minute statement to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny on June 23. It marked the 39-year-old's first time addressing the court in two years.

To McLean's point, among the bombshells from Spears was her assertion that her conservators "won't let me go to the doctor" to remove her IUD "because they don't want me to have children—any more children."

Spears, however, desires to have a baby with her boyfriend, Sam Asghari. She separately alleged being placed on lithium by the therapist she had when she decided to stop rehearsing for her Las Vegas residency show, which she officially canceled in January 2019.

"And lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to," the Grammy winner said. "You can go mentally impaired if you take too much, if you stay on it longer than five months. But he put me on that ,and I felt drunk. I really couldn’t even take up for myself. I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad really about anything."

"I told him I was scared, and my doctor had me on six different nurses with this new medication, come to my home, stay with me to monitor me on this new medication, which I never wanted to be on to begin with," she continued. "There were six different nurses in my home and they wouldn’t let me get in my car to go anywhere for a month."

Elsewhere, Spears called Jamie Spears her "ignorant father" and disparaged the trauma he has had a hand in putting her through. (Jamie had been her primary conservator until declining health caused him to step down into a co-conservator role in late 2019.) She admitted she hadn't been previously aware that she could petition to end her conservatorship outright but planned to do so now.

On July 6, Larry Rudolph, Spears' manager of 25 years, formally resigned and cited "her intention to officially retire." The same day, her court-appointed lawyer, Sam Ingham III, also resigned.

Most recently, crucial developments happened back in court Wednesday (July 14), as Spears' request to hire her own attorney was granted, and she voiced her intention to "charge my father with conservatorship abuse." Full updates are available at CNN.