Jamie Lynn Spears forced to hide from 'relentless' paparazzi when she was 16 and pregnant: 'It was horrible'
Jamie Lynn Spears got pregnant at 16 when she was at the height of her career, and now she is admitting just how bad things got.
Often overshadowed by her older sister, Britney Spears, Jamie Lynn garnered her own fanbase by starring as the lead character in the popular Nickelodeon series "Zoey 101." She shocked viewers in 2007 when she revealed her pregnancy.
"I got pregnant and I decided to keep the baby," she said during an episode of "I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!," when she was a contestant. "The whole world was like, 'You're a s---. You're horrible. Your life's over.'"
She says the scrutiny was particularly brutal because she was on a "kids' show."
JAMIE LYNN SPEARS USES BRITNEY SPEARS' LYRIC FOR TITLE OF NEW MEMOIR
"I had to go hide away for a long time," she explained of the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy. "I moved to Mississippi and literally hid. Put a gate around me."
"I had 20 paparazzi on me every day," she divulged. "They wouldn't leave me alone. They came and lived in Mississippi [in] the middle of nowhere. It was horrible."
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"I hated it so much, I just wanted to be normal because I wanted my baby to be normal. And everybody told me I was gonna be a horrible mom, so I was like, 'I gotta raise this baby by myself.' And so I did," she said of her decision to go forth with the pregnancy.
Spears was adamant about seeing the pregnancy through from the beginning, despite several people around her telling her not to. She even threatened to emancipate herself from her parents. "They had a lot going on, but I think [my parents] were just sad that I was in that situation. But also, it's your baby having a baby," she said of mother Lynne and father Jamie.
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Spears, now 32, said during that difficult period, she lied to her mother about her whereabouts. She told her mother she would have a doctor's appointment but would actually be consulting with a lawyer. When Spears brought the lawyer home one day, Lynne ultimately let her daughter go off on her own.
"It was like the first time in the world I had no one else. It was like I was in control," she said of her move to Mississippi.
The actress now lives in Louisiana with that baby, a daughter Maddie, who is the same age Spears was when she gave birth to her. Spears married husband Jamie Watson in 2014, and they welcomed their first child together, Ivy, in 2018.
This past summer, Spears reunited with her "Zoey" cast for a sequel film called "Zoey 102" which premiered on Paramount+.