Actress and singer Jamie Lynn Spears is opening up about her difficult decision to leave Hollywood at the height of her career after getting pregnant with her daughter, Maddie. In a new interview, the “Zoey 101” alum also reflected on some of the difficult conversations she had with people who were against her becoming a teen mom.
Speaking with PEOPLE, Jamie, the younger sister of megawatt pop star Britney Spears, recalled some of the nasty things she heard from those closest to her after revealing she was pregnant at 16.
“I was called the biggest letdown in the world,” she said, adding that people wanted her to believe that her “life was over.”
She added, “It was really, really tough not to believe those things.”
Why Jamie Lynn Spears Decided To Leave Hollywood Behind And Relocate To The South
While Jamie wasn’t releasing chart-topping singles like her sister, she was becoming one of the more prominent child actors at the time of her pregnancy.
She starred in the Nickelodeon sitcom “Zoey 101” from 2005 to 2008 before making the difficult decision to walk away from Hollywood to raise her daughter in “the middle of nowhere” Mississippi.
“It really was just me and her,” she said. “I had to be like, ‘Look, this little girl needs you. You better figure it out.’ I wanted to create a good, stable life for my daughter.”
Jamie Lynn Spears’ Daughter Says She’s Not The Reason ‘Zoey 101’ Was Canceled
During the interview, Jamie’s daughter, Maddie, spoke about her life as the daughter and niece of two major celebrities.
Now that she’s older, Maddie said she’s dealt with people telling her she’s the reason “Zoey 101” ended for most of her life.
“My TikTok is all like, ‘You’re the reason ‘Zoey 101’ is over. I can’t believe you made my show end,’” she said. “I’m not the one that ended ‘Zoey 101,’ I promise.”
Jamie then chimed in, saying, “I’ll repeat it until I’m blue in the face: We were wrapped! The contract ended Zoey.”
Jamie Lynn Took ‘Responsibility’ For Her Pregnancy When She Was A Teenager
In a previous interview with Hannah Brown on her “Better Tomorrow” podcast, Jamie got candid about her teenage pregnancy, revealing that she decided to take “responsibility” for conceiving at a young age.
“That was something I took responsibility for the way that made sense for me,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense for everyone else, but it made sense for me and the whole world came down and told me I was the worst human alive for doing so and that every young girl who ever watched my show was going to be ruined because of me and my personal decision.”
As she mentioned earlier, Jamie said that she relocated to the South with nothing but a house phone. Her reason? To focus on the things that truly mattered at the time.
“I think being in a small town and going into a store [where the clerk] who’s checking you out doesn’t care about who you are, what you’re doing or who’s taking your picture, she’s trying to get home to her kids,” Jamie said. “Interacting with people like that on a daily basis makes you have a much different outlook whenever a newspaper writes a bad headline about you that’s not true. Like, you know what, that doesn’t matter. These are the people that matter.”
Jamie Got To Say Goodbye To ‘Zoey 101’ In The Most Perfect Way
While “Zoey 101” wrapped in 2008, Jamie reprised her role as Zoey Brooks in the Paramount+ picture, “Zoey 102” in 2023.
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, the actress called the moment she returned to the set “surreal,” adding that she had to “pinch myself.”
“… it’s something we’ve worked on really hard for years to get, being patient to make sure it’s right, putting the right things in place,” she said. “And then it’s like a dream come true. It’s this thing you’ve been talking about and working on and trying to bring to life.”
Jamie credited the show’s fans for bringing the series back to life before reflecting on what it meant to be reunited with a character she played at such a young age.
“I was so ingrained in that character, so revisiting her was something I always dreamed of. But I was like, ‘Can that really ever happen? In what world, dude?’ Who gets to do something like that twice? It’s one of those things that I wasn’t sure if it could ever happen, but I always dreamed of being able to do it and see where she is,” she said.