Sam Asghari Defends Britney Spears As Influencer Mocks Her VMAs Video

Sam Asghari is no longer married to Britney Spears but he continues to stand by her.

After Spears, 42, posted an Instagram video in reaction to Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 MTV Video Music Awards performance on Thursday, September 12, social media influencer Michael Pavano posted a mocking reenactment of Spears’ now-deleted post.

Pavono’s Instagram video, which was posted on Friday, September 13, attracted a clear response from Spears’ former husband Asghari, 30, who posted in the comments section one day after Pavano’s video went live.

“Not cool 👎🏽,” Asghari wrote, echoing the sentiment of many social media users who commented the likes of, “Your [sic] mean,” and, “Poor woman …. leave her alone.”

Spears’ original video asked several questions of Carpenter, 25, who delivered a space-themed medley performance of her songs “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Taste,” at the VMAs.

Carpenter appeared to pay homage to Spears during the medley by playing a snippet from Spears’ song “Oops!…I Did It Again” during the transition from “Please Please Please” to “Taste.”

While performing “Taste,” Carpenter also adopted a space theme similar to Spears’ music video for “Oops!”

After admitting that she didn’t watch the awards ceremony, she did catch clips from the event on YouTube.

“Why is she kissing an alien onstage?” Spears said in the original video. “I love her. I adore her to death [but] I didn’t understand that part. Why didn’t she kiss a girl? That was weird.”

She continued to gush over Carpenter in the remainder of the video.

“This Sabrina girl, she said my name on the red carpet and I thought that was kind of cool,” Spears said. “Because I forget I’m famous sometimes … but that was kind of cool. This Sabrina girl, Carpenter, she said something about me and I was like, ‘Thanks! That’s cool!’ She made me cool.”

Asghari, who married Spears in June 2022 and filed to divorce her in August 2023, has proved an unwavering ally since the couple’s divorce was finalized in May 2024.

When Spears became the focus of TMZ’s documentary Britney Spears: The Price of Freedom, which focuses on the singer’s post-conservatorship life, in May 2023, Asghari posted an Instagram Story to share his horror. “I found it absolutely disgusting for the people who were in her life when she didn’t have a voice, they went and told her story like it was theirs,” he said at the time. “All of a sudden — after 15 years when she’s free after all those gaslighting, all those things that went down — now you’re going to put her under a microscope and tell her story?”

Asghari proposed to Spears in September 2021 after the pair had dated for five years. Even as he filed to divorce Spears, Asghari shared via his rep at the time that he “has always and will always support” the singer.