Britney Spears on Terrifying Moment with Snake During Iconic VMAs Performance: 'Are You F—ing Serious?' (Exclusive)

In an exclusive extract from her forthcoming memoir ‘The Woman in Me’, the pop icon talks about how her iconic MTV performance was “even scarier than it seemed”.

Britney Spears Enjoys Her Iconic 2001 VMAs Performance!

In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir shared with PEOPLE, The woman in meSpears, 41, writes about one of her most legendary live moments: when she performed “I’m a Slave 4 U” with an albino Burmese python named Banana wrapped around her shoulders at the MTV Video Music Awards.

“The plan was for me to sing ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’ and we decided I would use a snake as a prop. It became an iconic moment in VMA history, but it was even scarier than it seemed,” Spears writes. “All I knew was to look down, because I felt like if I looked up and caught his eye, he was going to kill me.”

Britney Spears.

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Spears survived the performance and now reveals what was going through her mind.

“I was saying in my head, He just performs, he just uses his legs and performs. But what nobody knows is that while I was singing, the snake put its head right in my face, right at me, and started hissing,” Spears writes. “I meant, Are you fucking serious now? A fucking bloody snake’s tongue is flying at me. Law. Now. I finally got to the part of getting him back, thank God.”

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The woman in me is Britney Spears.

The “Lucky” singer also opened up about her fear of reptiles on Instagram back in September, when she shared a performance clip and revealed “how scared she is” singing with a live python next to her.

In the clip, Spears famously had a snake wrapped around her neck while cradling her body with her hands, and it’s still held up as one of her favorites. “One of my favorite shows was with an albino python 😳🐍💃🏼 …” Spears wrote in the caption of the post. “I still remember how scared I was when I got this snake and went on stage !!!”

“I talked more about this performance and other favorites in my book #TheWomanInMe,” Spears continued in the caption of the post. “Can’t wait for you to read it on October 24th 😉🌹 @gallerybooks @simonschusteruk.”

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Britney Spears.

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The woman in me is now available for pre-order ahead of its October 24th release. The audiobook will be narrated by five-time Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams, PEOPLE exclusively revealed earlier this week. For the audio version, Spears will record the introduction, while Williams will lend her voice for the remainder of the memoir.

“This book is a product of love and all the emotions that come with it,” Spears told PEOPLE. “Reliving it all was exciting, heartbreaking and emotional to say the least. For these reasons, I will only be reading a small portion of my audiobook. I am very grateful to the amazing Michelle Williams for reading the rest.”

For more exclusive excerpts and interviews with Britney Spears, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.

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