A tearful Jamie Lynn Spears has broken her silence on her reunion with estranged sister Britney Spears and said she has ‘nothing but love’ for the popstar.

The pair have been feuding in recent years, particularly after the ‘Free Britney’ movement gained a higher profile and Spears succeeded in having her years-long conservatorship ended.

Now, after Britney, 41, revealed she had visited Jamie Lynn, 32, on the Zoey 102 reboot set last month, Jamie Lynn has emotionally discussed the fractious relations in the Spears family.

When asked by Variety about her relationship with Britney today, she said: ‘I have nothing but absolute love for every single one of my family members. If I learned anything from last year, being so open and feeling like I had to defend myself at times, I don’t feel like there’s anything else that I need to say.

‘I just have to leave it where it is because those conversations are meant to be personal. All I can focus on now is my girls, my husband and the work that I’m doing.’

Remarking on her tough year Spears teared up and said she was determined to protect her daughters – Maddie, now 15 and Ivey Joan, four-  from scrutiny around the family, saying: ‘It makes me sad. I don’t want my daughter to feel that way.

Candid: A tearful Jamie Lynn Spears has broken her silence on her reunion with estranged sister Britney Spears and said she has ‘nothing but love’ for the popstar (pictured 2017)

Family first: Remarking on her tough year Spears teared up and said she was determined to protect her daughters – Maddie, now 15 and Ivey Joan, four- from scrutiny around the family, saying: ‘It makes me sad. I don’t want my daughter to feel that way

‘So I have to say I will absolutely not allow my children — especially my oldest daughter, who was very affected by all of it — I will not allow her to feel this way in her life.

‘My strength is out of the love for my children and wanting to make sure that I don’t give way to anything other than what I know to be authentic and true. It was hard, but at the end of the day, look where I am now.’

Jamie Lynn added that she tells Maddie to be ‘proud’ of the family and look up to Britney as a ‘strong female, adding: ‘You have something to be proud of, and you should have pride in that.’

The star added that she ‘doesn’t know’ if she and Britney will ever be on stage together again.

This comes after Britney revealed in an Instagram post last month that she had she had recently visited the actress ‘on set last week.’

She didn’t specify the project that Jamie Lynn was working on, and it is unclear if the filming was related to her upcoming Zoey 102 movie, which released its first trailer earlier on Tuesday.

Jamie Lynn would neither confirm or deny if Britney had indeed ever visited her on set, with sources telling Variety she didn’t want to answer the question as she wanted to avoid damaging relations with her sister.

Speaking of the upcoming Zoey 101 film, she said:’ It’s been years of getting it right, getting it wrong, figuring out logistically how to make this work and putting a team together that really wanted it to happen the right way. When I walked on set the first day I was like, “My God, we really did this. We’re here, we’re doing it.”‘

Jamie Lynn also recalled having to give up her career in Hollywood when she became pregnant with daughter Maddie at age 16. She shares Maddie with ex Casey Aldridge, and then welcomed a second child, daughter Ivey, with her husband Jamie Watson in 2018.

Jamie Lynn said she was in the process of transitioning from television to movies when she learned of her pregnancy.

‘I think when I wrapped Zoey there were all these plans of things like, “Let’s go do movies.” I was reading scripts for things I was excited about. But like a lot of young girls, I thought I was in love. And there I am, pregnant at 16. I was so concerned about bringing another human being into this world, but I needed to figure out who I was.

‘And the press wasn’t exactly very nice. I wanted to get as far away from it as I could. So I got a house in Mississippi. I put up a gate, put myself on a budget and said, “I’m gonna raise my baby back here.” And that’s what I did for a while. But I also wanted to show her that I could provide for her future and that I could continue on to be what I wanted to be. Bringing her into my life was not something that I regret or held me back.’

One of the movie scripts she was actually reading for was Twilight. Jamie Lynn didn’t have high hopes for the future blockbuster.

‘I did read for Twilight. This was before vampires had really made their mark. Now we all love to watch stories about vampires, but I literally was like, “Vampires? Are you kidding me?” I remember reading it and going, “Who is going to watch these vampires?” Boy, was I wrong.’

Britney Spears parties after visiting sister Jamie Lynn on set

Bad blood: Britney has feuded on and off with her younger sister in recent years amid the drama around the dissolution of her 13-year conservatorship; seen in 2003 in Santa Monica

After having her baby, Jamie began doing songwriting in Nashville. However, she still longed to return to acting one day.

‘I was kind of afraid to come back. I was like, “What if it doesn’t work out?” But it was something I always wanted. I think I was afraid to admit it to myself because I didn’t wanna give everybody the satisfaction of saying, “It’s not gonna happen for you. You had a baby, remember?”‘

She said she knew it would have been in the best interest of her mental health to completely turn her back on acting, but she was unable to.

‘It’s all I know. It’s the only way I know to be. It’s a part of me. How do you unknow some- thing? I knew it was gonna happen, but I was real scared. I was scared of failing.’

Now she hopes her five-year-old daughter’s acting ambitions are only temporary: ‘I really hope it’s a phase. Do five-year-olds go through a phase like that?’

But Jamie Lynn conceded she had always wanted to be in the spotlight.

‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, was to be able to be in front of the camera. And I also think going through things I’ve gone through makes me appreciate it. It’s like, “Wow, how lucky am I have a job and I get to provide for my children doing something I love. I’ve always fought to keep my place to the table. I just feel like I appreciate every single time I get a seat at the table.’

She admitted she wasn’t sure if she was necessarily inspired by her big sister to get into showbiz.

‘I don’t ever remember a time where I didn’t want to do it. And I’m sure seeing someone, too. Everyone has an idol and mine just happened to be kin to me. Of course you’re going be inspired by what you’re around, but I don’t remember ever thinking about doing anything else.’

Although much of the sisters’ relationship has remained hidden from the public, the two appear to have been feuding in recent years, particularly after the ‘Free Britney’ movement gained a higher profile and Spears succeeded in having her years-long conservatorship ended.

Britney’s sweet family reunion was revealed in the caption of her post, while the video showed her dancing on a boat as she celebrated her first vacation with husband Sam Asghari ‘in a year.’

Getting close again? Britney dropped the bombshell that she had reunited with her estranged sister Jamie in an Instagram post last month

‘It was nice to visit my sister on set last week !!! I’ve missed you guys so much !!!’ Britney gushed at the start of her caption. ‘Loyal girls stay home but it’s so nice to visit family !!!’

The video featured Britney showing off her svelte figure in a hot pink bikini while covering her long blond hair with a floppy brown hat.

She beamed ear to ear while dancing with a pal. In one playful section, she turned around to dance and highlight her derriere while her husband Sam Asghari smoked a cigar, before he gave her a playful slap on her rear end.

‘This is me and Hesam’s first vacation in a year !!!’ she said, using Sam’s full name. ‘I’m so so blessed and l’m gonna play the queen of hearts now !!! Normally that’s Spanish right mamma  !!! Should I do French from now on ??? Latin ??? Portuguese or German ??? Nahh I dunno  because I don’t speak English !!!’ she joked.

The Toxic singer sounded fairly nonchalant about the reunion, which came after she repeated lambasted her sister on social media in recent years.

The sisters were apparently close earlier in the 2000s, when Britney was at the top of her game and Jamie Lynn emerged from her shadow to star on the Nickelodeon show Zoey 101.

The younger star subsequently left her show and took an extended hiatus from acting in 2007, when she announced that she was pregnant at just 16.

As recently as 2017, Britney was joking on social media about what a great time she had when she was with her little sister.

But the two appeared to have reached a breaking point in April of that year, when Britney was awarded the first Icon Award at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards.

Pretty in pink: The video featured Britney showing off her svelte figure in a hot pink bikini while covering her long blond hair with a floppy brown hat. She said it was her first vacation with husband Sam Asghari in a year

Letting loose: Sam gave her a playful slap on her rear end while she danced for him as he smoked a cigar on the boat

Didn’t see that coming: ‘It was nice to visit my sister on set last week !!! I’ve missed you guys so much !!!’ Britney gushed at the start of her caption. ‘Loyal girls stay home but it’s so nice to visit family !!!’; Jamie Lynn seen in December 2022 in LA

Jamie Lynn was among the performers paying tribute to her, and she sang an excerpt of her big sister’s single Till The World Ends.

Britney’s smile looks particularly forced in footage of her watching her sister — who was also joined on stage by Hailee Steinfeld, Kelsea Ballerini and Sofia Carson — and she complained years later that she was upset that her sister had performed one of her songs.

‘I don’t like that my sister showed up at an awards show and performed MY SONGS to remixes,’ she complained in a since-deleted post, though it wasn’t clear if her concerns about the remixes were that the original song had been polluted, or that she wanted to perform her own updates of her tunes.

‘My so-called support system hurt me deeply !!!! This conservatorship killed my dreams .. so all I have is hope and hope is the only thing in this world that is very hard to kill … yet people still try,’ she added.

After the Free Britney movement got into full swing later in the decade, Jamie expressed concerns about it in 2019 in a tweet featuring a video of Britney being mobbed by overzealous fans and photographers from years earlier.

’10 years ago, who was there?? I have been here long before anyone else and I’ll be here long after,’ she wrote. ‘I love my sister with everything I have. So anyone or anything that speaks to the contrary can GTFOH with all the comments about what you don’t understand.’

Her defensive post came after some of Britney’s most obsessive fans publicly asked her younger sister to more vociferously defend her in public.

The Free Britney movement wasn’t pleased a year later, when Jamie Lynn was reported to be a trustee to Britney’s estate by the Los Angeles Times.

At the time, she had publicly revealed herself to be a trustee in a court filing requesting that some of Britney’s vast fortune be moved into accounts that she would oversee, which could later only be moved with a judge’s sign off.

Fractured relationship: Britney claimed she was upset by a 2017 performance at the Radio Disney Music Awards when Jamie Lynn sang a remix of one of her own songs after she won an honorary award; seen in 2005 in LA

Jamie Lynn Spears joins Zoey 102 cast as trailer is released

However, Jamie Lynn later claimed that she was not on ‘the payroll.’

The tensions between the sister were impossible to ignore after Britney’s conservatorship hearing on June 24, 2021, in which she said that she never knew she could ask to end her conservatorship.

She also made the shocking claim that the conservatorship wasn’t allowing her to get married to her partner Sam Asghari, and she also accused the arrangement of preventing her from having children with him. She claimed that she was not allowed to have an IUD contraceptive removed in order to get pregnant.

Britney seemed to point fingers at her family, and though she didn’t explicitly single out her sister, she didn’t do anything to separate her from her mother Lynne and father Jamie Spears, both of whom she had publicly feuded with.

‘Anyone involved in this conservatorship, and my management who played a huge role in punishing me [should] be in jail,’ Spears said during the hearing. ‘And I would honestly like to sue my family, to be totally honest with you.’

The sisters went on to snipe at each other on social media throughout the rest of the year, and the passive-aggressive posts only got worse after news broke that Jamie Lynn was set to release a memoir, which initially was titled I Must Confess, which referenced Britney’s mega-hit …Baby One More Time.

The two largely stopped referring to each other throughout much of 2022, and Britney only referenced Jamie Lynn in December of last year with a seemingly conciliatory Instagram post for her 41st birthday.

‘It’s my b-day but you’re my heart so I’m thinking about you,’ she wrote while posting two photos of Jamie Lynn. ‘Congratulations on being so brave, inspiring, and showing guts and glory in your show !!! You ain’t alone … if anybody knows what that feels like … I get it. My baby sister !!! I love you !!!’

It’s unclear what happened between the sisters during the past year to change Britney’s tone, but Britney’s recent reunion and reconciliation with her mother Lynne Spears may have helped.

Furious: Britney later said in an explosive 2021 court hearing that she wanted to sue her entire family for running her conservatorship. Jamie Lynn was reported to be a trustee

Bringing family back together: A source revealed to DailyMail.com this week that Lynne Spears has been ‘begging Britney to make amends’ with her sister. They had their own reunion back in May and appear to be on better terms now

Earlier this week, a source revealed to DailyMail.com that Lynne had been urging her oldest daughter to bury the hatchet with Jamie Lynn.

‘Lynne is begging Britney to make amends with her sister Jamie Lynn now,’ the insider shared. ‘They are both leaning towards a yes. Lynne knows that Britney does miss her sister and she told her that the feeling is obviously mutual.’

But, the source added, it’s going to take some convincing to bring Britney around to the idea of a truce with her estranged sister — and an apology from Jamie Lynn.

‘Britney still feels that Jamie Lynn is the one who messed up and, if they are going to meet, she would need to come to her and not vise versa,’ the source revealed, adding: ‘Lynne is figuring out now how to make this happen, but she is not going to rest until everything is perfect again.’

After three years of estrangement, Lynne flew from Kentwood, Louisiana, to Los Angeles in May to pay a surprise visit to Britney at her home in Thousand Oaks.

The stage mom’s efforts proved to be worth it, as they sat down for 30 minutes and were able to hash out their issues and undue the damage that was caused by the horrific 13-year conservatorship that Britney was forced into by her father, Jamie Spears, 70.

The insider said that Britney and Lynne ‘have been in constant communication since.’

A separate source close to the situation tells DailyMail.com that — although Lynne is determined to reunite her girls — she is trying her best to ease into the situation by taking it one day at a time.

‘Lynne knows that it still will take time to get back on the same page and fall into all the right places their relationship needs to be.

Lingering hurt: The source added that Britney misses her sister, even though she things Jamie Lynn was still the one in the wrong, and she thinks the actress should be the first one to apologize

‘But she loves Britney more than anything and clearing up the wounds of the past is something she has strived to achieve for a long time,’ the family confidante added.

‘Lynne also understands that there is more of a process to go through, but she is showing 100 percent effort to make sure that her own relationship with Britney continues to strengthen.

‘With all of the drama that they have dealt with in the last couple of years with each other, Lynne’s recent meeting with Britney was a promising step in the right direction for better days ahead,’ the insider told DailyMail.com.

On November 12, 2021, Britney was freed from a 13-year conservatorship that she was placed in by her father Jamie, 70 —  who, she claims, mentally and emotionally abused her for financial gain.