Britney Spears Thought The Giant 2001 MTV VMAs Snake ‘Would Kill’ Her!

Pop star Britney Spears is finally dishing on her iconic 2001 MTV Video Music Awards performance from over 20 years ago!

The 41-year-old pop star performed with a giant snake wrapped around her body for her performance of “I’m A Slave 4 U.” Now, over 20 years later, the Princess of Pop is finally describing what that experience was like to her followers in her memoir, “The Woman In Me.”

In an excerpt from “The Woman In Me” published by People magazine on Tuesday, the “Toxic” singer described what it was like performing with a giant snake wrapped around her shoulders.

“The plan was for me to sing ‘I’m a Slave 4 U,’ and we decided I would use a snake as a prop. It’s become an iconic moment in VMAs history, but it was even more terrifying than it appeared,” Britney wrote in her memoir. “All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me.”

"In my head I was saying, Just perform, just use your legs and perform. 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 continued. “I was thinking, Are you f---ing serious right now? The f---ing god--- snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God."

Britney first opened up on the experience on September 6. She took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share a video of the iconic performance. In the caption, she wrote, "One of my favorite performances was with an albino python … I still remember how scared I felt when I was handed this snake and took the stage !!! I talked more about this performance and other favorites in my book #TheWomanInMe. I can't wait for you to read it on October 24."

In 2021, for the performance’s twentieth anniversary, the snake handler, Michael Hano, talked about what it was like working with Britney Spears in an interview with the TODAY show. During the interview, he shot down the rumor that she worked with an albino python named Banana.

“It's an amelanistic Burmese python, not albino, because albino is lacking all pigments and that type is lacking only the black pigments, so it's amelanistic,” Hano explained. “Totally albino would be the all white." He also doesn’t remember the snake’s name, but confessed that people “love to make stuff up.”

When asked what it was like to work with the “Womanizer” singer, he said that it was “very good,” adding, “She was very focused and initially she was scared of the snake, but you could see that she was able to focus and kind of push yourself to be able to work with the thing and look comfortable doing it.”

However, it was a little difficult to convince the producers to work with her one-on-one. “After a couple of little missteps because these people in television ... sometimes they just don't want to listen, then they realize that they better listen to the guy with the snake,” he said. “I finally got to just be alone with her for a few minutes so she gets it. At one point, she said, ‘He’s not gonna bite me, right?’ And my answer is always, and my agent hates me for this, ‘Probably not.’”

“You're freakin' Britney Spears, you know, if this thing bites you, I think my career is over,’” he continued, saying that the joke helped the pop star feel more comfortable with the snake, which can weigh up to 200 pounds and grow to be 20 feet long. “She realized that I was being completely honest with her, which is the route that I like to take with these celebrities,” he added.

“This was onstage at the Metropolitan Opera House and when I first showed up, they had me sitting in the audience area while the group was rehearsing their choreography,” he recalled. “I was sitting there for quite a while until they were ready for the snake to be brought in. All the dancers and Britney were rehearsing and even when the director was like, ‘OK, take five,’ and everyone was walking off the stage to take a break, she kept practicing."

"There was no music playing and you can see she was counting, you know, 2, 3, 4 or whatever, and practicing her dance steps on her own,” he continued. “I said, ‘Oh wow. Look at this. She is really a hard worker. Same thing with the snake. At first, she was scared and uncomfortable with it, but she pushed herself with it and did really well, I gotta say.”

Fans can read more about Britney's decades-long career in the entertainment industry in "The Woman In Me," which hits bookshelves on Tuesday, October 24.