Britney Spears’ friend and former assistant, Sean Phillip, revealed details about their text exchange following the singer’s DUI arrest.
“All I texted her was, ‘Are you OK?’ and she said, ‘I’m OK,’” Phillip shared on Friday’s episode of “Good Morning Britain.”
“And I said, ‘Do you mind if I speak about this?’ And she said, ‘Go ahead,” he continued. “And that’s that.”
Phillip noted that while he feels “anxiety” doing interviews about the 44-year-old pop star, he wants “the world to know” that Spears is “such a great person.”
“And we all make mistakes,” he added.
Spears’ pal also revealed that the pair speak “almost every other day.”
“I love her. She’s such a strong person,” he told the UK morning show hosts. “And so, just as everyone else was surprised with this instance happening, I was as well. But it’s not her character. She’s just a lovely, lovely, lovely person.”
Phillip further explained that since he’s known Spears “for almost 24 years,” he’s determined to “protect her no matter what cause she’s not a harmful person.”
“It makes me feel bad when she has to endure public mistakes,” he also said.
Later in the interview, the hosts asked Phillip about Spears’ manager, Cade Hudson, saying in a statement that the DUI incident will lead to “overdue change” in Spears’s life.
“The change I would like to see is [for her to] get out of Los Angeles,” Phillip said. “But I’ve been talking to her weekly, daily, and she is the same Britney I knew from 2003.”
He continued, “There’s no disassociation that I have with her character or personality. But you have to think about these things … who else is she associating with and so on.”
Spears was arrested for driving under the influence by the California Highway Patrol in Ventura County, Calif., at around 9:28 p.m. local time Wednesday.
911 dispatch audio exclusively obtained by Page Six captured an officer describing Spears’s Black MMW sedan convertible swerving “in and out of lanes” and “speeding.”
The “Toxic” singer, who was believed to be under the influence of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol during her arrest, underwent a series of field sobriety tests before she was booked into the Ventura County Main Jail. She was released three hours later.
She was reportedly taken to a hospital after her arrest for her blood to be drawn so officials could determine her blood alcohol content.
Page Six learned that Spears was “crying and very tearful” while being booked for her DUI arrest.
“She was incredibly emotional,” a source exclusively told us. “It’s been a very hard couple of months.”
Hudson addressed Spears’s arrest in a statement to Page Six Thursday, calling the incident “completely inexcusable.”
“Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law and hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life,” her manager said.
“Hopefully, she can get the help and support she needs during this difficult time,” he added.
