Mara Wilson speaks out in defence of Britney Spears: ‘She needs to be able to live her life for herself’

‘Anybody would be chafing under those restrictions, anybody would be struggling,’ said the ‘Matilda’ star

Mara Wilson has shown her support for Britney Spears amid the pop star’s ongoing conservatorship battle.

The Matilda star is the latest celebrity to speak out for Spears, as she continues her legal battle to end the conservatorship that has controlled her business and personal affairs since 2008.

Appearing in open court for the first time in 13 years in June, Spears said: “I am not happy, I can’t sleep. I’m so angry, it’s insane. And I’m depressed… I am telling you again because I am not lying… so maybe you can understand the depth and the degree and the damages… I deserve changes.”

In a new interview, Wilson admitted that while she’d never met Spears, she felt that she could relate to her experience as a fellow former child star.

“I really feel like I keep thinking about her song, ‘Overprotected’, and I think that she really needs to be able to live her life for herself, because she hasn’t for so long,” Wilson told Entertainment Tonight.

“She has been living a life under somebody else’s control and that is terrible, and I think that is the truth for a lot of people who achieve that level of fame. They don’t really have any freedom.”

She continued: “But she didn’t have any freedom because of paparazzi and because of what was done to her because of the conservatorship, so I think that we need to let her live her life because anybody would be chafing under those restrictions, anybody would be struggling.”

It’s not the first time Wilson has connected her own experience to Spears’s. In February, she wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which she criticised the media’s treatment of the singer.

“The way people talked about Britney Spears was terrifying to me then, and it still is now,” she said.

“Her story is a striking example of a phenomenon I’ve witnessed for years: Our culture builds these girls up just to destroy them. Fortunately people are becoming aware of what we did to Ms Spears and starting to apologise to her. But we’re still living with the scars.”