Hollywood Central: Britney Spears Traveled To Mars For 'Oops! ... I Did It Again' Video

Friday, February 18, 2011

Britney Spears Traveled To Mars For 'Oops! ... I Did It Again' Video

In anticipation of the premiere of Britney's 'Hold It Against Me' video, we look back at her classic 2000 clip.
By Jocelyn Vena

Britney Spears in "Oops! ... I Did It Again"
Photo: Jive Records

Who would have thought that a red piece of latex would mean so much to a pop star. For Britney Spears, that skintight garment was something she wanted to make sure made the final cut of the ultra-glossy video for her 2000 smash hit "Oops! ... I Did It Again."

The video's director, Nigel Dick, reminisced in a 2009 MTV News interview about Spears' request for the now-unforgettable red-latex catsuit. "[She said,] 'I want to be in a red jumpsuit. I want to have a really cute spaceman, but there can't be any rockets,' " he remembered. "There was another catsuit, actually, which was fantastic, which I loved, and the night before, I was told that Britney hired this guy that worked with Michael Jackson. And so we're going to use that catsuit. So that's the catsuit."

As it turned out, making sure that they got the suit right wasn't the only dilemma for the director. "There's a bit about the Titanic in the middle, and I was like, 'What are we going to do about that?' " he recalled, laughing. "And she says, 'Don't worry. You'll sort it out.' "

The video was a high-profile project for Spears and Dick, who had a lot of pressure on them to top clips like "... Baby One More Time," which he also directed. " 'Oops! ... I Did It Again' was the first single from her second album, so there's definitely the sense that this is Britney's second album," Dick added about the expectations surrounding the video's 2000 release.

"This whole idea was my idea," Spears told MTV in 2000. "I was like, 'I want to be on Mars, dancing on Mars.' It's really futuristic. It's going to be the first video that I've done to have a lot of special effects. I think it's more mature. It's edgier. It's funkier. It's fun."

The shoot didn't go as planned, as a now-infamous on-set incident left the singer injured. "There was a camera, and there was an overhead shot, and they were filming me and the camera fell," she said. "And it kind of knocked me out, and there was drama ... but it was fine."

Don't miss Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me" video premiere Thursday, February 17, at 9:56 p.m. ET on MTV and MTV.com, followed by a live discussion on MTV.com at 11 p.m. about the new clip and what's next for the pop star!

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