Britney Spears Says Hit in Face by Wembanyama's Security

French basketball player Victor Wembanyama was caught up in an incident involving his security and pop star Britney Spears. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
French basketball player Victor Wembanyama was caught up in an incident involving his security and pop star Britney Spears. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
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Britney Spears Says Hit in Face by Wembanyama's Security

French basketball player Victor Wembanyama was caught up in an incident involving his security and pop star Britney Spears. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
French basketball player Victor Wembanyama was caught up in an incident involving his security and pop star Britney Spears. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP

Las Vegas police said Thursday they had investigated an incident between French NBA top draft pick Victor Wembanyama's security and pop star Britney Spears, who said she had been hit in the face.

Wembanyama is in Las Vegas ahead of his first game in the NBA Summer League against Charlotte on Friday and was heading to a restaurant when he was spotted by fans -- and Spears.

Media reports said that Spears was pushed away by Wembanyama's security, which the singer's husband Sam Asghari said was "violent" and "out of control."

Wembanyama told reporters after practice that he only heard of Spears' involvement some hours after his dinner, AFP said.

"There was one person who was calling me but we talked before with the security (to not) stop because it's gonna make a crowd," said the Frenchman.

"That person was calling me 'sir sir' and that person grabbed me from behind, so I didn't see what happened because I was walking straight.

"I don't know with how much force but security pushed her away and I didn't stop to look so I kept walking and enjoyed a nice dinner."

Spears said she had simply wanted to greet the player and questioned Wembanyama's account.

"I recognized an athlete in my hotel lobby as I was heading to dinner. I later went to a restaurant at a different hotel and saw him again. I decided to approach him and congratulate him on his success," she said on Instagram.

"I tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. I am aware of the players statement where he mentions 'I grabbed him from behind' but I simply tapped him on the shoulder," she said.

"His security then backhanded me in the face without looking back, in front of a crowd. Nearly knocking me down and causing my glasses [to fall] off my face."

The Las Vegas Police Department investigated the incident but did not take any action.

"On July 5, 2023, at approximately 11 p.m., LVMPD officers responded to a property in the 3700 block of Las Vegas Boulevard regarding a battery investigation," the police said in a statement.

"The incident has been documented on a police report and no arrest or citations have been issued. No further details will be provided at this time."

Asghari posted on social media that Spears had been "assaulted."

"The violent behavior of an out-of-control security guard should not cast a shadow on the accomplishment of a great young man on the rise @wemby," he wrote.

"I can't imagine a scenario where an unarmed female fan, showing any kind of excitement or appreciation for a celebrity would cause her to be physically assaulted, much less being hit in the face for tapping someone on the shoulder."



Star Wars Series ‘Andor’ Back for Final Season

Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)
Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)
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Star Wars Series ‘Andor’ Back for Final Season

Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)
Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)

If "Andor" -- which returns from Tuesday for its second and final season -- has been received as one of the very best "Star Wars" TV series, that is largely thanks to the grittier, more adult approach taken by its creator Tony Gilroy.

That standpoint -- far, far away from the family-pleasing tone often encountered in the "Star Wars" universe run by the Disney empire -- should be of no surprise to those who watched the 2002 action thriller "The Bourne Identity", written by Gilroy.

Its genesis was already evident in the 2016 "Star Wars" movie "Rogue One", which Gilroy co-wrote -- and which serves as the climax to "Andor", which recounts the rebellion leading up to that film's events.

"Everything is emotionally charged" because "we're getting close to 'Rogue One'," Diego Luna, the actor who plays the protagonist Cassian Andor, told AFP.

For Disney, the success of "Andor" stands out as a new hope for a franchise that has become hit-or-miss with audiences in recent years.

That is why it has banked heavily on the 12-episode story, which cost a staggering $645 million to make, according to Forbes magazine.

Where "Rogue One" was about a rebel suicide mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, with "characters that sacrifice everything for a cause", "Andor" is about how one of those characters "gets there", Luna said.

Unlike in a typical hero's journey, the series explores the motives and dark sides of both camps: the rebels and the Empire. It spends time with figures such as a rebel alliance operative played by Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard.

Gilroy, speaking to AFP with Luna during a Paris visit, said the original plan was for five seasons of "Andor", but he came to realize "there's no physical way to do it" given "the volume of work" required.

The result was two seasons, but with episodes that were "more intense, more complex in every possible way", Luna said.

With season one finishing in late 2022 with a stunning 96-percent rating on the critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, season two has star billing on the Disney+ streaming platform.

That season hits the small screen from Tuesday in the United States, or from Wednesday in France, Germany, Italy and other territories.

- Revolutionary reading -

"Andor" is not the only hit "Star Wars" television series.

"The Mandalorian", which preceded it, excited audiences for the first two seasons before interest waned in its third. That story will move to the cinemas, with a film scheduled for release next year.

But "Andor" has impressed fans and critics with its darker vibe, greater political themes and more realistic tone.

Gilroy said his approach to the series was informed by a decades-long reading obsession about uprisings -- "all this crazy stuff I've learnt about... the Russian Revolution and... the French Revolution, and Thomas Paine and Oliver Cromwell and the Haitian Revolution and the Roman Revolution and Zapata."

"I mean, it's all in there," he said.

The second season focuses on the use of propaganda, looking at the tragic destiny of a planet called Ghorman, for which Gilroy and his team embarked on serious world-building, imagining its economy, language, culture and dress.

Part of the inspiration came from a French TV series about a village living under German occupation in World War II, "A French Village".

"I loved that show... I had some of those actors in my head" while writing about Ghorman's inhabitants, he said.

Even if some people might see some echoes of today's Earth in aspects of "Andor", Gilroy said a writer's horizon, stretching years ahead, did not allow him to anticipate current events.

But, he said, "the sad truth is that history is... rinse and repeat," adding: "We so commonly feel, narcissistically, that we live in unique times."

Technology might change, the rhetoric might alter, "but the dynamic of oppression and resistance are a Catherine wheel. It just keeps going. I think it's timeless, sadly."