"I don't touch that one.
She would chew me up and spit me out immediately!”
This is the only response from Felicia Culotta, Britney Spears' former assistant, when the authors of the Netflix documentary
Britney vs Spears
ask her about Louise, known as "Lou", Taylor.
The name of this
business manager
, founder of the Tri Star agency, has long been known in the United States.
And perhaps even more since the lifting, in November 2021, of the guardianship of the popstar.
Guardianship in which Louise Taylor seems to have played a capital role and thanks to which she would have built a fortune, a reputation and a clientele in solid gold.
This 56-year-old former accountant, originally from New York State, began her career as a
business manager
in Florida, at the age of 25, as an employee.
“I fell in love with financial, personal and business management, especially the organization of tours.
So it became my niche,” she told Variety
magazine in 2017 .
In 1992, she took off and founded her own agency, Tri Star, with three athletes as her first clients.
In 2001, she opened an office in Nashville, Tennessee, and signed with
country singers
.
The agency manages for its clients the edition of payslips, financial or investment declarations, the planning of tours and residencies, production budgets... In 2008, a Tri Star office was born in Los Angeles.
In video, the trailer of “Britney vs Spears”
A suspicious loan
The rise of Louise Taylor begins that year, when Britney Spears, she collapses.
Absolute star for already twenty years, the singer is then the mother of two children and a woman in pain.
Her psychiatric disorders are the delight of a press eager to get off the tracks - such as when she misses dropping her baby or shaves her head - which sends her paparazzi to hunt her down tirelessly.
This same year, therefore, the father of Britney Spears requests and obtains the placement of his daughter under guardianship, a system provided for by law and intended for people unable to take care of themselves.
The singer is then deprived of any decision concerning her, from the choice of her contraception to her bank accounts through her career.
Everything is run by his father, supported by a legal team and managers.
Among the latter, Tri Star, the agency of Louise Taylor, of which James Spears was already a client... and from whom he has just borrowed 40,000 dollars, as revealed by a long investigation by the
New York Times
.
Elevator return?
When he places his daughter under guardianship, is James Spears indebted to Lou Taylor?
Absolutely not, answers the latter's lawyer.
Not so simple, retort the journalists of the
New York Times
, quoting Anthony Palmieri, president of the National Guardianship Association: "Are the decisions of the guardian motivated by the best interest of the "guardee", or that of the business manager? to which he is indebted?
Clearly, did Lou Taylor take advantage of, or even abuse the tutelage of the singer to enrich herself?
This is the question tackled by Mathew Rosengart, the lawyer whom Britney Spears was authorized to choose in July 2021. He is struggling, for the moment, to unlock the secrets of Tri Star, who has stopped working for the family. Spears in 2020. In November 2021, Mathew Rosengart asks the courts for a complete audit of the agency over the past 13 years.
Lou Taylor and her team immediately filed a motion in court to oppose it, arguing that the Spears family never disputed the annual accounting reports produced by Tri Star, at the request of justice, during the singer's guardianship.
wealth manager
Not enough to lessen the suspicions hanging over Lou Taylor, as she seems to be at the heart of the device.
Shortly after the guardianship began, James Spears launched his daughter on a 97-concert tour, for which he hired Tri Star as manager.
In the process, accounts are opened for Britney Spears at Stonebridge Wealth Management, another company of which Lou Taylor then held half.
In December 2009, the manager also takes over the management of a large part of the property and the fortune of the interpreter of
Toxic
.
This same fortune from which the father of Britney Spears and his legal team draw to be paid as tutors, and Tri Star, for his management services.
The following years, Britney Spears released three albums and took on as many tours.
From 2013 to 2017, in residence in Las Vegas, she gave nearly 250 shows - nearly a million tickets sold and more than 100 million dollars in revenue.
Between the services invoiced and the commissions collected on the concerts, how much, exactly, did Louise Taylor earn?
Neither she nor her lawyers have ever released any figures.
The New York Times
reporters
s put forward a percentage of 5%, without being able to say to what it corresponds precisely.
One certainty: the 13 years of supervision of Britney Spears have been ultralucrative.
And this, thanks to Tri Star, according to Lou Taylor's lawyers, who assure that the business manager has "faithfully served" the singer and recall that she helped her build a fortune of 60 million dollars.
"It's a success from all points of view," they hammered to the
New York Times
.
Full screen
At a #FreeBritney rally, a protester holds up a 'It's been Lou Taylor all along' sign.
(New York, September 29, 2021).
Getty Images
Suspicions of forced labor
Except, perhaps, for the first concerned.
In June 2021, before the Los Angeles court, to which she is asking for her guardianship to be lifted, Britney Spears assures us that her guardians and managers, including Lou Taylor, would have forced her to work tirelessly while blaming her for her lack of investment and his bad will.
Even if it means prescribing new, more powerful treatments to make her bend better.
Clearly, she accuses Lou Taylor and his family of having transformed it into a cash machine, against his consent and for their sole benefit.
In November, in an Instagram post, she also blames her managers and her mother for having placed her under surveillance using microphones, cameras and software that spy on her phone – which Samantha Stark also claims, the director of the documentary
New York Times
,
Controlling Britney Spears
.
Read also"She was not treated like a human being": the revelations of the new documentary on Britney Spears
Tri Star, through the voice of his lawyers, denies all these accusations and his supposed role as the architect of guardianship.
Nevertheless, the company and its founder have benefited.
Thanks to her role with the Spears, Lou Taylor established her reputation.
More and more visible, a time spokesperson for the singer's family on television sets, she won prestigious clients, including members of the Kardashian family or actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas.
Lou Taylor herself becomes an icon of the entertainment industry, the embodiment of the American dream.
In 2019, The
Hollywood Reporter
calls it Business Manager Icon.
Throughout the portraits, the magazines portray her as an ambitious CEO, who would have exploded the glass ceiling without losing any of her humanity or her ardent desire to defend women, at work and in Hollywood.
Read alsoIn court, Britney Spears compares the toxic influence of those around her to “sex trafficking”
Evangelism and financial flows
Women, the very religious Lou Taylor was also interested in the church.
With her husband, Rob, she founded in 2001, in Tennessee, a chapter of Calvary Chapel (la Chapelle du Calvaire in French), an international evangelical Protestant community.
Rob is the pastor, Louise the women's affairs officer.
Since then, in the couple's address book, business and religion mingle until they merge.
Including in his ties to James Spears.
Still according to the
New York Times
, tens of thousands of dollars, taken from the philanthropic works of Britney Spears, were paid in 2010 to a Christian counseling group close to the Taylor couple.
Group whose founder would boast in particular of encouraging lesbians to deny their sexual orientation, far from the proximity between Britney Spears and the LGBT community.
The American daily adds that at certain times, James Spears donated to a church managed by the Taylors 10% of his income from guardianship, which would amount, in total, to around 6 million dollars.
Without knowing, there either, if Britney Spears was aware, and even less if she approved of it.
After years of silence, the singer seems in any case determined to be heard.
And perhaps to make pay those who, for thirteen years,
kept under glass.
“They should be in prison,” she assured the Los Angeles court in June.
