A casual date night for Britney Spears and husband Sam Asghari at a JOEY restaurant Friday in Los Angeles ended in a bizarre Britney “meltdown,” according to TMZ.
Upon arriving for dinner, fans quickly spotted the acclaimed pop star and whipped out their phones to snap photos and film her, causing Spears to become visibly upset, footage obtained by the outlet shows.
According to witnesses, the seemingly “manic” 41-year-old “Piece of Me” singer began yelling and “talking gibberish,” prompting Asghari to storm out of the Woodland Hills restaurant, TMZ reported.
In the diner footage, Spears can be seen sitting alone, muttering to herself, before leaving the restaurant with her bodyguard
Her eyebrow-raising behavior comes as #FreeBritney activists fear she’s still being controlled.
The “Toxic” singer — who has an on-again off-again relationship with social media — has brazenly posted nearly nude images on Instagram of herself bathing and lounging on the beach. She’s even shown herself participating in odd dances, flipping her middle finger at her camera and eating cake off of the floor.
Following the end of her 13-year conservatorship, which allowed her father to control her estate, fans were left unsure if the iconic pop star was actually as free as she claimed to be.
They especially seemed suspicious of Spears’ nuptials last year, as onlookers alleged she didn’t seem to be in her right mind.
While the singer assured fans she couldn’t breathe due to a panic attack earlier in the day, she also admitted she hasn’t had “real consciousness in three years.”
Looking for someone to blame, fans pointed fingers as Asghari, who later denied the allegations.
“No, I don’t even control what we have for dinner,” the 28-year-old model told TMZ last month. “You know, in the past, there has been a lot of stuff going on, so I understand where [fans are] coming from.”
“They’re just being protective. If anything, they’re being good fans,” he added.
Spears is no stranger to public meltdowns. In 2007, the then-25-year-old Grammy winner took a razor to her brown locks when a stylist refused, coming out of the salon bald.
Shortly after, amidst her divorce from ex-husband Kevin Federline, she was swarmed by paparazzi at a gas station, and in retaliation, smashed a photographer’s car with an infamous green umbrella.
“It was a bad moment in her life,” the photographer, Daniel Ramos, said at the time. “Unfortunately it was captured.”
Spears’ troubled relationship with her family has also resulted in public, online spats, especially with her younger sister Jamie Lynn, who lamented the reality of living in the star’s shadow just this month.
“Are we gonna say it was hard being my sister ???? Hmmmmmmmmmmm …. really ???” Spears wrote on Instagram in a lengthy caption to a post that has since been deleted.
“Not a victim story or crying about it because I was never a big deal … I sat in a chair for 10 hours a day and no rights for 4 months !!!” Spears also wrote, referring to her allegedly forced stint in a mental health facility in 2019.
“[My family] hurt me and nothing was done except that I lost 15 years of my life with my family owning my name … subjected to being an angel while my dad has 5 women on his tour bus drinking that cup of coffee … so cool and smooth it must have been nice owning my name for 15 years,” she added.