Emma Roberts Calls Britney Spears Casting Rumors ‘My True Dream’
Emma Roberts would like to throw her hat in the ring to play Britney Spears in a feature film adaptation of Spears’ recent memoir The Woman In Me. After Spears’ former assistant Felicia Culotta reportedly suggested Roberts to play the iconic singer, the actress confirmed the role would be her “dream.”
“I was like, ‘I love her assistant,’” Roberts told Cosmo. “I mean, it’s my true dream to play Britney Spears. It’s a rumor, but I hope maybe it’ll come true. I mean, I remember I locked myself in my room and listened to In the Zone and said, ‘I cannot leave this room until I memorize every word.’”
She added that she could sing the entire 2003 album off the cuff if asked. “I mean, I sing Britney to my son in the bath all the time,” Roberts said. “I’m always like, ‘God, he must think I’m so weird.’ That’s some millennial parenting.”
Earlier this month, Universal Pictures picked up the rights for the film, a dramatic adaptation of Spears’ 2023 memoir. Producer Marc Platt and Wicked filmmaker Jon Chu are attached to develop it. No writers or cast have announced.
According to reporting from The Ankler, the film will be based on The Woman in Me, which dropped last October. Spears’ book, which quickly became a best-seller, detailed her grueling 13-year conservatorship, parenthood, complex relationships with previous partners, and how her connection to music had been permanently altered.
The film follows 2017’s unofficial biopic Britney Ever After, which aired on Lifetime. At the time, a rep for Spears told Entertainment Weekly that Spears would not be “contributing in any way, shape, or form to the Lifetime biopic … nor does it have her blessing.”
Around the time of the end of Spears’ conservatorship, Spears’ life was also the subject of various documentaries, including the New York Times and FX’s Framing Britney Spears and Netflix’s Britney vs. Spears.
Roberts recently appeared in Marvel spin-off Madame Web and comedy film Space Cadet. She also starred in FX series American Horror Story: Delicate, which wrapped its second half in April.