Britney Spears has hit out at US TV journalist Diane Sawyer claiming she was forced to do an interview with her 18 years ago in which she infamously made the pop star cry.

A clip of the 2003 sit-down chat recently resurfaced in the documentary Framing Britney Spears with many criticising Sawyer for intrusive questions about the singer’s sex life and the manner in which she framed her public break-up with Justin Timberlake the year before, accusing her of having been unfaithful.

In a now deleted Instagram post, the Slave 4 U hit-maker fumed: “Do we dare forget the Diane Sawyer interview in my apartment almost 20 years ago???

“What was with the ‘you’re in the wrong’ approach ?? Geeze … and making me cry ???”

“My manager put that woman in my home and made me talk to her on national television and she asked me if I had a shopping problem,” she continued.

“When did I have a problem with shopping? When I never left my apartment?’

Spears said she was ‘in shock’ after her split from Timberlake and she ‘couldn’t talk afterwards’, adding: “Pretty lame of my dad and three men to show up at my door when I could hardly speak... two days later they put Diane Sawyer in my living room... they forced me to talk!”

Last month she was freed from a 13-year conservatorship which saw her father Jamie Spears control most aspects of her life.