Busy Philipps says she and Michelle Williams 'lost it' over her narrating Britney Spears' memoir

Michelle Williams' audiobook narration of Britney Spears' memoir, The Woman in Me, ranks among her finest performances — somewhere between Fosse/Verdon and her criminally underrated work in I Feel Pretty.

Upon the announcement that the five-time Oscar nominee would be reading the memoir, Williams released a simple statement: "I stand with Britney."

Now, Williams' bestie Busy Philipps has recalled their very relatable reaction to Williams getting to give voice to the definitive pop star of their generation.

"We lost it," Philipps said on Watch What Happens Live. ""She was like, 'I have to do this, right?' I was like, 'Yes! Obviously!' And she's like, 'I really do, Biz.' She really felt a connection."

The Mean Girls star went on to explain the parallels both she and Williams felt to Spears' story as young women coming of age in the glare of the public eye in the truly wild time of the early '00s. Phillips had mined similar territory with her own memoir, 2018's This Will Only Hurt a Little.

"We all — and Michelle, even younger than me — we all came up in a very particular time in this industry, that was what the majority of my memoir is about, as young women, and we were subjected to a lot," Philipps said. "I think that there was a lot that was, sadly, very relatable to all women in Britney's book, but I thought that Michelle doing it was just incredible and really beautiful."

She added, "Britney deserves our respect,"

Spears wrote candidly about her struggles with fame, the public falling out between her and boyfriend Justin Timberlake, feeling stalked and stifled by paparazzi and the media, being put under conservatorship of her father, and ultimately coming out the other end.

Because of the sensitive subject matter, Spears said in a press release for the memoir that she chose only to read "a small part of my audibook. I am so grateful to the amazing Michelle Williams for reading the rest of it."

And so are we.

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