Britney Spears felt like the snake she performed with was going to ‘kill’ her during her iconic performance in 2001.
The 41-year-old pop star recalled the massive python ‘flicking’ its tongue and ‘hissing’ at her as she performed onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards.
In her upcoming memoir The Woman in Me, she said she tried her best to keep her head down as she sang I’m a Slave 4 U because she felt like ‘it would kill’ her if she ‘caught its eye’.
Just weeks earlier, Spears revealed she was ‘scared’ of snakes and less than enthused about performing with the ‘terrifying’ reptile even though it remains ‘one of [her] favorite performances’ to this day.
This comes shortly after she took to Instagram and debuted a new red snake tattoo placed on her lower back.
Iconic performance: Britney Spears felt like the snake she performed with was going to ‘kill’ her during her iconic performance in 2001. The 41-year-old pop star recalled the massive python ‘flicking’ its tongue and ‘hissing’ at her as she performed onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards
She said she was going to use the ‘snake as a prop’ as she sang 2001 hit single I’m a Slave 4 U on stage.
Everything went as planned, the Gimme More hitmaker — who recently went viral for playing with another dangerous prop after she posted several knife dancing videos online — recalled until the albino Burmese python named Banana started getting too close to her.
‘The plan was for me to sing I’m a Slave 4 U, and we decided I would use a snake as a prop,’ she wrote in an excerpt obtained by People.
During her performance, however, she said the snake started getting close to her face and hissing at her.
She said the reptile also started ‘flicking’ its tongue near her face and noted it was ‘terrifying’.
‘It’s become an iconic moment in VMAs history, but it was even more terrifying than it appeared,’ she explained.
‘All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me,’ she wrote in her bombshell tell-all.
After getting through the performance unscathed, she now revealed what was going on in her mind at the time.
‘Terrifying’: In her upcoming memoir The Woman in Me, she said she tried her best to keep her head down as she sang I’m a Slave 4 U because she felt like ‘it would kill’ her if she ‘caught its eye’
Freaking out inside: Although she got through the performance unscathed, she recalled how she was freaking out in her mind at the time but had to tell herself to continue singing and dancing
Affinity for dangerous props: The Gimme More hitmaker — who recently went viral for playing with another dangerous prop after she posted several knife dancing videos online — also recently talked about how it remains ‘one of my favorite performances’ to this day despite how ‘terrifying’ it was
Upcoming bombshell tell-all: The Woman in Me is set for release and will hit shelves on October 24
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‘In my head I was saying, “Just perform, just use your legs and perform”,’ she recalled telling herself.
‘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 wrote.
‘I was thinking, “Are you f***ing serious right now? The f***ing godd*** snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now.” Finally I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God,’ she explained.
The Woman in Me is set for release and will hit shelves on October 24.