The oh-so-shy Britney—the girl too timid to even sit on Santa’s knee in Christmas grottos—was nervous. It was the same before any contest: her body quivered slightly, her knees knocked, but she maintained focus. Here was a fascinating dichotomy within the young Britney: the painfully shy and seemingly subdued little girl, who needed Mum to be near, versus the little dynamo who had the presence, gusto and confidence to perform out of her skin.
Within reassuring eyeshot, Lynne sat behind Matt Casella, offering constant reassurance. But the moment Britney walked out and took to the floor, the energy shifted within. From a humming generator of nervous energy, she burst into a livewire of performing electricity. She transformed from shy to dazzling in an instant, as if someone had flicked a switch. Like the fictional Billy Elliot, it felt like electricity in her body.
Years later, in her Stages publication, Britney described this switch-moment in her own words: ‘There’s something that comes out of me—like this energy or force. It’s just my time to express myself, to feel the lyric and the rhythm, to go with the music and the moment. I’m running on the adrenaline and the excitement—and the electricity of the audience.’
Britney’s Aunty Chanda was often a fascinated observer of such transformations and said: ‘She just went from this shy, reserved girl who was scared to talk to a stranger, to someone who was on top of the world. It was a like a light turned on inside her.’
The psychotherapist offers an explanation as to why someone can so effortlessly switch from withdrawn to livewire:
Children raised in traumatic environments where there is a lot of shouting and yelling are withdrawn because it is a learned behaviour not to exist too loudly. A child doesn’t want the pain it sees being directed in his or her direction. I suspect that Britney would tell you that she tried to be impeccably behaved or invisible—until she was performing because that’s when she was guaranteed to bring happiness.
In Atlanta, Matt Casella was blown away by what he witnessed, referring to her ‘amazing triple threat’—an industry term for those capable of a multi-professional discipline in singing, dancing and acting. ‘Britney was the most talented eight-year-old I ever auditioned,’ he says on his MySpace page. ‘She was a one-of-a-kind kid with the singing, dancing and acting. She did it all and then threw in gymnastics at her final video taped audition for me in Atlanta, just to make sure she showed me all that she could do.’
When her performance stopped, Britney bowed, stood still and then became all coy again, her eyes unsure whether to leave the video camera before darting to catch her mum’s proud gaze. Matt’s video still catches this awkward, yet modest moment as Britney starts to twiddle her long hair, between thumb and forefinger.
‘Great. You always bow?’ Matt is heard asking his protégée. She nods, unsure.
‘Who taught you that?’
‘My mama,’ said Britney letting her hair fall free. ‘She just told me every time I sing, just to bow.’
Matt Casella would have signed up Britney there and then, but after consultation with Disney executives it was felt that, even though she was almost nine, she was too young for a show where the average age of a ‘mouseketeer’ was twelve. The same thing ultimately happened to another nine-year-old in Pittsburgh: Christina Aguilera. It was their first taste of rejection but it was hardly a brutal fall because Matt’s belief and enthusiasm cushioned the blow and he urged both of them to return. In Britney’s case, he reassured her that he would be making a life-changing call on her behalf.
The offices of the Carson-Adler talent agency are somewhat anonymous-looking on West 57th Street, New York; situated high above a Gap store between 8th Avenue and Broadway and yet forensic officers would be able to follow a trail of Stardust stretching back almost 30 years, from the revolving doors of Hollywood and Broadway to the elevator that takes you to one of the most respected agencies in the industry, on the twentieth floor of the Fisk Building. This is where child stars come to learn, grow and find guidance.
Names such as Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Mischa Barton and Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon have all passed through here as children, wide-eyed with expectation and dreams. And Britney Spears joined their ranks when she arrived for a meeting with Nancy Carson, the agency’s owner, after Matt Casella’s over-the-phone recommendation persuaded her to meet with the little girl from Louisiana.
This mother hen of Broadway was the ideal rep for the Spears, who were already lost and uncertain within the vast-ness of their daughter’s mere potential. Nancy’s experienced but maternal tenderness was extremely reassuring. Indeed, she would go on to write a parental guide for young hopefuls called Raising A Star, promoted as a ‘guide to helping kids break into theater, film, television or music’. She looks for youngsters driven by an inexplicable but burning desire to perform; a child who will drag their parent into her office, not vice versa. And that was Britney, always pulling on Lynne’s arm to allow her to perform. It was Britney who was propelling her destiny, contrary to popular opinion.
Lynne, with the detached support of Jamie, may have facilitated the dream, but she never invented nor pushed it. If anything she was excited by the prospect of her child bettering the life that she’d had, as family friend Joy Moore told an NBC Dateline special in April 2008: ‘Lynne just had such high hopes, you know? That her kids were going to have it better. It was just these wonderful dreams.’
Lynne had already spoken to Nancy over the phone, and submitted a raw videotape showcasing Britney’s talent as she belted out ‘Shine on Harvest Moon’ and Sinead O’Connor’s haunting ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. It was then that she invited them to New York. Within the community of Kent-wood, Jamie and Lynne could see the frowns from those who felt they were opening up their daughter to crushing, inevitable rejection. And even if she made it, they would be denying her the riches of childhood, it was argued. The consensus was that the Spears shouldn’t allow their child’s schooling to be interrupted by far-fetched dreams. It was, says Lynne, indicative of ‘a small-town way of thinking.’
Dance tutor Steve Hood explained: ‘The only thing kids were encouraged to do here was go to church, leave school and get married—anything else simply wasn’t an option. Singing and dancing was something people did on television and it wasn’t for the likes of us Louisiana folk. No one liked change and everyone did exactly what was expected of them—until Britney came along.’
Undeterred, the Spears kept going, so emotionally invested were they in Britney’s dream, and they headed to New York in February 1991. Unable to afford the airfare, they made the 1,400-mile journey by Amtrak, travelling the No. 19 train from New Orleans Union terminal direct into New York’s Pennsylvania station. The travelling party was Britney, Lynne, Jamie, brother Bryan, his friend Hunter, Aunty Jeanine (Jamie’s sister) and cousin Tara. The average journey time is 30 hours, so the family bunked down in a two-bed sleeper carriage and booked one hotel room for all of them once they’d arrived in the Big Apple.
The country folk pitched up in Manhattan slightly bewildered by its density. Horizons were compressed into the narrowing funnels of the avenues, and the sky could only be seen by looking upward. Britney’s first question was to ask where the cows were. It must have been an odd experience for a child to be transported from the remote roads of trundling trucks to the bedlam