Kevin Federline says his sons with Britney Spears are the reason for his
new memoir
[October 18, 2025]
By ANDREW DALTON
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kevin Federline says concern for his two sons with
Britney Spears long kept him from telling his story, and those same
concerns are the reason he's telling it now that they're men.
In a memoir to be released Tuesday, “You Thought You Knew,” Federline
documents his difficult years as husband, ex-husband, and co-parent with
Spears, who wrote her own memoir in 2023.
Federline's includes some salacious stories and some potentially
disturbing details about her behavior that have already made headlines.
“I want my children to be able to move forward in their lives and know
that the actual truth of everything is out there,” Federline, 47, told
The Associated Press in a Zoom interview, backed by palm trees in
Hawaii, where he now lives with wife Victoria Prince and their two
daughters. “That’s a very, very big part of this for me. And it’s really
important that I share my story, so they don’t have to.”
He and Spears' son Preston is now 20 and his brother Jayden is 19. They
have little relationship with their mother.
Federline was a 26-year-old backup dancer for other major pop acts when
he coupled with Spears in 2004. Their courtship, two-year marriage and
divorce took them through one of the most intense celebrity media
frenzies in modern history. Federline was ruthlessly roasted as a loser
hanger-on, especially after he released his own deeply mocked hip-hop
album.
“I wasn’t just famous — I was infamous,” he writes in the book, which
will be released on the new audiobook first platform Listenin.
He told the AP he long considered writing the book, but recently got
serious about it.
“I picked it up and put it down quite a lot over probably a five-year
period,” he said. “I think that it’s a very good description of me, who
I am, the father I’ve become, the husband I am, the ex-husband I am.”
Key revelations from Kevin Federline about Britney Spears
— Federline describes the night he and Spears first connected at a
Hollywood nightclub, and how they hooked up hours later in a hotel
bungalow: “Britney turned around, slipped off her underwear and started
kissing me, tearing at my clothes with both hands. We stumbled toward
the bed while I struggled to kick my pants off my ankles. This. Is.
Happening. OK, sorry. Calm down, that’s as detailed as I’m going to
get.”
— He writes that a “San Andreas-level seismic shift in my reality”
followed a few hours later when he left the hotel with Spears and dozens
of paparazzi cars followed them.
— He describes the night before their wedding, when Spears called her ex
Justin Timberlake, seeking closure: “She never really got over him. She
might’ve loved me, but there was something there with Justin that she
couldn’t let go of.”
— Federline said seeing Spears drinking while pregnant “tripped the
silent alarms in my head.” He later was outraged when he saw her doing
cocaine when the boys were still breastfeeding, saying “are you
seriously going to go home after this and feed them like you don’t have
a body full of drugs?”
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Britney Spears, right, and her husband Kevin Federline arrive for a
post Grammy party in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Feb. 8, 2006. (AP
Photo/Danny Moloshok, File)
— He writes that Preston told him Spears mercilessly mocked him and once
punched him in the face.
— He says the boys began refusing to visit her when they were 13 and 14,
and later told him stories that “shook me to the core.” “They would
awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway,
watching them sleep — ‘Oh, you’re awake?’ — with a knife in her hand.”
Spears' response to Federline's book
Spears responded with a statement on her social media accounts. She said
Federline has engaged in “constant gaslighting.”
“Trust me, those white lies in that book, they are going straight to the
bank and I'm the only one who genuinely gets hurt here.” She said,
adding that “if you really know me, you won't pay attention to the
tabloids of my mental health and drinking.”
She also addressed her relationship with her sons:
“I have always pleaded and screamed to have a life with my boys.
Relationships with teenage boys is complex. I have felt demoralized by
this situation and have always asked and almost begged for them to be a
part of my life. Sadly, they have always witnessed the lack of respect
shown by (their) own father for me.”
An attorney for Spears did not respond to a request for comment.
Federline's life, and thoughts about Spears' life
Federline writes about growing up in Fresno, California, and finding “my
therapy and my purpose” through dance.
He reminisces about his first big tour, with Pink, and working with
Aaliyah, Destiny's Child and Michael Jackson. He details wrestling with
John Cena in the WWE and appearing in a self-mocking Super Bowl
commercial.
Federline says Preston and Jayden are living on their own as young
adults, and have both been working on making music that makes him proud.
He weighs in on Spears' dissolved court conservatorship, saying it was
necessary but hurt most of the people involved. He said the fans who
fought to free her left an unfortunate legacy.
“The Free Britney movement may have started from a good place, but it
vilified everyone around her so intensely that now it’s nearly
impossible for anyone to step in,” he writes.
He says in the book that he wrote it in part as a public plea for her to
get more help.
“I've lost hope that things will ever fully turn around,” he writes,
“but I still hope that Britney can find peace.”
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