Britney Spears has said her 2001 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) performance with a Burmese python was "even more terrifying than it appeared".
The American singer has written about the experience in her new memoir, The Woman In Me, which will be published this month.
In passages from the book, published by US publication People, the singer talks about the moment she performed at the VMAs with an albino Burmese python named Banana wrapped around her shoulders.
The 41-year-old writes: "The plan was for me to sing I’m A Slave 4 U, and we decided I would use a snake as a prop.
"It’s become an iconic moment in VMAs history, but it was even more terrifying than it appeared."
She added: "All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me."
Revealing what was going through her mind at the time, Spears said: "In my head I was saying, just perform, just use your legs and perform.
"But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing."
She added: "I was thinking, Are you f****** serious right now? The f****** goddamn snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now.
"Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God."
Spears also released a trailer to promote the book on Instagram.
The video starts with an off-screen interviewer asking Spears when she last "felt free", with Spears responding, "When I got to drive my car".
The singer has also written about her conservatorship, saying she felt like she was "never good enough" for her father Jamie Spears and felt like a "child-robot".
Usually reserved for the very ill, the conservatorship was terminated by a judge in Los Angeles after 13 years in November 2021.
The Woman In Me will be published by Gallery Books, an imprint of publishing company Simon & Schuster, on 24 October.
Source: Press Association
