Busy Philipps shares Michelle Williams’ initial reaction to being asked to voice Britney Spears’ audiobook
Busy Philipps and her best friend Michelle Williams collectively “lost it” when the latter was asked to narrate the audiobook of Britney Spears’ memoir.
“She was like, ‘I have to do this, right?'” Philipps, 44, recalled on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” Tuesday.
“I was like, ‘Yes! Obviously!'”
The “White Chicks” star shared that Williams, 43, “felt a connection” to “The Woman in Me,” which hit stores in October 2023.
“We all — and Michelle, even younger than me — we all came up in a very particular time in this industry … as young women, and we were subjected to a lot,” Philipps explained, highlighting that she felt there was “a lot” about Spears’ story that was “sadly very relatable — to all women.”
The “Freaks and Geeks” alum beamed over her close pal seizing the opportunity, calling her former “Dawson’s Creek” co-star the “right” choice for the voiceover.
“I thought that Michelle doing it was just incredible and really beautiful,” she said, adding that “Britney deserves our respect.”
Andy Cohen agreed, noting that the Princess of Pop, 42, also “deserves some peace and some happiness.”
Page Six exclusively reported last year that Spears, her team and her publishers had selected Williams because of the “tremendous amount of class and elegance” she possesses as well as her own complex family dynamic.
“There was a mutual attraction from all sides based on Britney’s powerful narrative and what Britney went through, and Michelle’s own integrity and history with her own emancipation issues,” an insider told us at the time.
The Oscar-nominated actress and the Grammy-winning singer both rose to fame in Hollywood when they were very young and have also been estranged from relatives.
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Williams was legally emancipated from her parents at age 15, while Spears was under the allegedly abusive conservatorship of her father for close to 14 years.
The “Toxic” singer previously described her tell-all as “a labor of love and all the emotions that come with it.”
She then explained why she would be reading only a “small part” of the book: the introduction.
“Reliving everything has been exciting, heart-wrenching and emotional, to say the least,” she said. “I am so grateful to the amazing Michelle Williams for reading the rest of it.”
The “Manchester by the Sea” star’s narration was so well-received that she even went viral for one particularly noteworthy impersonation of Spears’ former boyfriend Justin Timberlake saying, “Fo shiz, fo shiz,” to R&B crooner Ginuwine.
