Liz Meriwether’s Going Back To Britney’s Pop Era For Biopic

Liz Meriwether isn’t saying much about the actual plot of Universal’s forthcoming Britney Spears biopic — but she is offering a revealing glimpse into how she’s preparing to tell it. In a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter, the New Girl creator and filmmaker opened up about immersing herself in Spears’ music, revisiting her memoir The Woman in Me and getting comfortable with a feature-writing process that puts her in a somewhat unfamiliar position.

As previously reported, Meriwether is writing the adaptation, with director Jon M. Chu and producer Marc Platt also attached to the project. The film marks a return to feature filmmaking for Meriwether, who hasn’t written a feature in 15 years.

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That hiatus makes the collaborative nature of the Spears project particularly refreshing for her. “I’m so used to being the final word on everything, but it feels really relaxing at the moment because I’m writing something and I don’t have to be the one to figure this out,” she told THR. “I get to just be a writer and that’s fun.”

Her preparation has been decidedly Britney-centric. Meriwether says she has read The Woman in Me and listened to Michelle Williams’ audiobook narration “multiple times,” calling the latter “one of the best audiobooks that’s ever been made.” Of Williams’ performance, she added, “It’s like a monologue. I told her that her performance of the audiobook broke my heart in so many ways.”

Meriwether is also treating Spears’ music as a kind of time machine. “I’ve been listening to her music a lot,” she said. “I’ve been listening to a lot of music that was happening around the time that she was making music.” Since Meriwether and Spears are the same age (44), she says the period-specific soundtrack has an immediate effect: “I’m exactly Britney’s age, so a lot of that music just takes me like immediately back.”

And Meriwether isn’t limiting herself to the obvious hits. “I have been going back into her whole catalog, and I’ve been making a playlist for myself of my favorites,” she said. Asked to name one favorite, she resisted — but singled out two deeper cuts: “I really love ‘Perfume’ and ‘If I’m Dancing.’”

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