Michelle Williams is just like us — and completely “lost it” when Britney Spears reached out.
The “Brokeback Mountain” star was handpicked to narrate the audiobook version of Spears’ memoir, “The Woman in Me,” to rather viral results. While Williams has five Oscar nominations under her belt, this unexpected offer appeared to be the role of a lifetime.
“We lost it,” fellow actor and close friend Busy Philipps told Andy Cohen on Wednesday’s “Watch What Happens Live” episode. “She was like, ‘I have to do this, right?’ I was like, ‘Yes! Obviously!’ And she’s like, ‘I really do, Biz.’ She really felt a connection.”
Williams had clear reasons to feel that way. Though she didn’t endure a 13-year conservatorship like Spears, Williams started out as a child actor who emancipated herself as a teen and had to navigate the perils of Hollywood. The actor has also faced hardship as an adult, including when Heath Ledger, her ex-partner and the father to her daughter, died in 2008.
“We all — and Michelle, even younger than me — we all came up in a very particular time in this industry, that was what the majority of my memoir is about, as young women, and we were subjected to a lot,” Philipps told Cohen.
“I think that there was a lot that was, sadly, very relatable to all women in Britney’s book, but I thought that Michelle doing it was just incredible and really beautiful,” she continued. “Britney deserves our respect.”
Spears was a child when she joined Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” and was only 16 when her debut single, “…Baby One More Time” was released in 1998. She was in heavy MTV rotation at the turn of the millennium, but was put under a strict legal arrangement in 2008.
Spears was widely celebrated for fighting the conservatorship of her father, which saw her stripped of any control over her career or finances and bodily autonomy. Its dissolution arrived in 2021 amid a viral #FreeBritney movement, which Williams later championed.
“I stand with Britney,” she told People after accepting the singer’s offer.
“The Woman in Me” and its audiobook version simultaneously hit shelves in October.