Bella Thorne Weighs in on Britney Spears Legal Situation Amid Her Own Publicity

Bella Thorne knows a thing or two about being a child star, so she’s weighing on on the #FreeBritney movement with more personal experience than most. Thorne, like everyone else, watched The New York Time Presents: Framing Britney Spears, and she spoke to Fox News about how the documentary made her feel while promoting her new single, “Shake It.”

“It was so sad when I watched it,” Thorne told Fox News. “Everything I was looking at made me really, really, really sad knowing that this was happening, knowing that this still happens, knowing that we’re all a part of this, that we all did this to her.”

Thorne has spoken of her own issues with childhood fame, so she feels a kinship with Britney Spears and what she went through in the public eye. “By the time I was 14 I was very famous and there was paparazzi, people constantly looking at me and trying to touch me and insert themselves around me, around my life,” Thorne explained. “Fake people, real people, all kinds of people including the public judging me for everything that I do.”

Thorne also pointed out that while there are levels of complicity, everyone contributed to the cultural problem. “Even if you didn’t do anything to [Britney], you talked about her with your friends, you heard about those photos of her hitting that car, someone made a joke in a group — we’re all a part of it. That makes it so much more incredulous,” Thorne continued. “The documentary is stunning in the sense that it really gives us the full-blown perspective of the situation. But it’s really disgusting in the sense that here it is in black-and-white, this is what we did to her. My goodness, I just feel literally terrible.”

The documentary has many people reconsidering the way that Spears was slut-shamed after her break up with Justin Timberlake, and Thorne drew parallels in her own life after her ex Charlie Puth publicly accused her of cheating. “I was called a cheater and a slut and that hurt and people still think that was true,” Thorne said. “I’ve definitely been through my fair share of people putting some other perspective on me or lying about me publicly. I definitely relate to the male misogyny that is placed on all of us, in us women.”

Thorne said that she was “of course” a supporter of the #FreeBritney movement, and she hopes that as many people as possible offer their apologies to Spears. “Let’s #FreeBritney all day,” replied Thorne. “I think everyone should go and apologize to her all over social media and say, ‘We’re sorry. We’re sorry we did this to you. We’re sorry we put this on you. We see you now. We’re here and we see you.’”