Simon Cowell Says It’s a ‘Shame’ Britney Spears ‘Absolutely Hated’ Her Time on The X Factor: ‘She Wasn’t Happy’

Simon Cowell is reflecting on his decision to recruit Britney Spears as a judge for season two of The X Factor.

The pop star joined the show in 2012 for one season — but later said in her memoir that she “absolutely hated” her time on the series. In an interview with The New York Times, Cowell recalled being uncertain that Spears truly wanted to be a judge, and said he offered her an early out.

Cowell, 66, explained that he’d heard Spears, 44, was interested in working with him, and though he doubted it would materialize, scheduled a call with her. He said he was happy to find the “Gimme More” singer “fun, engaged, passionate [and] interesting” over the course of a two-hour phone call.

“She just really, really want[ed] to do it, I think for the right reasons, which was to be a mentor,” he recalled. “I’m like: Brilliant.”

The former American Idol judge said he even requested a second phone call with Spears for fear that her enthusiasm in their first chat might be a “fluke,” and was pleasantly surprised to find that she was still game to be on the show.

Cowell said Spears’ attitude toward the show changed, though, once they began doing press to promote the season.

“We do a press launch, and Britney’s there and she doesn’t look that happy. And I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ She said, ‘I didn’t realize there was going to be so much press around,’” he recalled. “And then on the show, she really struggled with saying no to people. Just didn’t like it.”

Cowell said on the first day of filming, he sat down with the star and told her that if she really wanted out, he would let her quit.

“I got to know her when she came over to my house one time, and we just talked and talked, because I really wanted to get inside her head. Was she happy? Was she unhappy?” he recalled. “She wasn’t happy. That’s what I took away. It was like two different people.”

When the Times journalist pointed out to Cowell that Spears wrote negatively about her experience on the show in her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, he called it a “shame.”

“I did say to the network, ‘I don’t know if she wants to do it, and if she doesn’t, we’ve got to give her the option of being able to leave.’ No one was forcing her,” he said. “She also mentioned to me how much she didn’t like pop music. She was into a different kind of music. So I think she probably struggled with mentoring the artists.”

In her book, Spears wrote that at the time, she was living under her conservatorship and was still “messed up psychologically” from her divorce from Kevin Federline several years earlier.

In order to keep herself busy, she threw herself into work, despite the fact that she felt “very, very nervous” being on TV and no longer felt suited to life in the spotlight.

“To act skeptical for eight hours straight while judging people on TV? Uh, no thank you. I absolutely hated it,” she wrote.

Spears celebrated her 44th birthday on Tuesday, Dec. 2, and marked the occasion with the release of a paperback version of her book. The memoir sold nearly 3 million copies in the U.S., and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, including five weeks at No. 1.

Cowell, meanwhile, is set to release the six-episode docuseries Simon Cowell: The Next Act on Netflix on Dec. 10.