LOS ANGELES — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kevin Federline is expressing concern about his two sons with Britney Spears have kept him from telling his story for a long time, and the same fears are the reason he tells it now that they are men.
In “You Thought You Knew,” a memoir to be published Tuesday, Federline describes his difficult years as a husband, ex-husband and co-parent. Spears, who wrote her own memoirs in 2023.
Federline's book contains several salacious stories and some potentially disturbing details about her behavior that have already made headlines.
“I want my children to be able to move forward in their lives and know that the real truth is out there,” Federline, 47, told The Associated Press in a Zoom interview, leaning against palm trees in Hawaii, where he now lives with his wife Victoria Prince and their two daughters. “That's a really, really big part of it for me. And it's really important that I share my story so they don't have to.”
He and Spears' son Preston are now 20, and his brother Jayden is 19. They have little relationship with their mother.
Federline was a 26-year-old dancer for other major pop acts when he teamed up with Spears in 2004. Their courtship, two-year marriage and divorce took them through one of the most intense celebrity media frenzies in modern history. Federline was mercilessly roasted as a loser hanger-on, especially after he released his own much-derided hip-hop album.
“I wasn’t just famous—I was notorious,” he writes.
He told the AP that he had been thinking about writing a book for a long time, but recently became serious about it.
“I picked it up and put it off quite a bit over probably a five-year period,” he said. “I think that's a very good description of me, the person I am, the father I have become, the husband I am, the ex-husband.”
– Federline describes the night he and Spears first met at a Hollywood nightclub, and how they met hours later in a hotel bungalow: “Britney turned around, took off her underwear and started kissing me, tearing my clothes with both hands. We wandered to the bed as I struggled to get my pants off my ankles. This. This. Happening. Okay, sorry. Calm down, this as much detail as I can get.”
He writes that “a seismic shift in my San Andreas-level reality” followed a few hours later when he left the hotel with Spears and was followed by dozens of paparazzi cars.
“It describes the night before the wedding when Spears called her ex. Justin Timberlakeseeking closure: “She never got over him. She may have loved me, but there was something about Justin that she couldn't give up.”
– Federline said the sight of Spears drinking while pregnant “set off a silent alarm in my head.” He was later outraged when he saw her doing cocaine while the boys were still breastfeeding, and said: “Are you seriously going to go home after this and feed them like you don't have a body full of drugs?”
“He writes that Preston told him that Spears bullied him mercilessly and once punched him in the face.
He says the boys started refusing to visit her when they were 13 and 14, and later told him stories that “shook me to my core.” “Sometimes they would wake up at night and find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep: 'Oh, are you awake?' – with a knife in his hand.”
Spears replied with a statement on her social media accounts. She said Federline engages in “constant gaslighting.”
“Believe me, these white lies in this book go straight to the bank, and I'm the only one who really got hurt here.” She said, adding that “if you really know me, you won't pay attention to the tabloids about my mental health and alcohol.”
She also spoke about her relationship with her sons:
“I was always begging and screaming for me to live with my boys. Relationships with teenage boys are difficult. I felt demoralized by this situation and always asked and almost begged them to be a part of my life. Unfortunately, they always witnessed the lack of respect shown to me by (their) own father.”
Spears' lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
Federline writes about how he grew up in Fresno, California, and found “my therapy and my purpose” through dance.
He recalls his first big tour with Pink and working with Aaliyah, Destiny's Child and Michael Jackson. He details his fight with John Cena in WWE and his time in a tongue-in-cheek Super Bowl commercial.
Federline says Preston and Jaden are living on their own as young adults and are both working to create music that he is proud of.
He weighs Termination of Spears' legal conservatorshipstating that it was necessary but caused harm to most of the participants. He said the fans who fought for her release left a sad legacy.
“The Free Britney movement may have gotten off to a good start, but it has vilified everyone around her so much that it is now nearly impossible for anyone to intervene,” he writes.
In the book, he says he wrote it in part as a public plea for her to get more help.
“I have given up hope that things will ever completely change,” he writes, “but I still hope that Britney can find peace.”
