Sam Asghari, the pop star’s fiancé, is working on his own path to fame in a year that has thrust him into the spotlight.
Sam Asghari is a nascent actor and erstwhile personal trainer. But this highly polite, handsome and friendly 27-year-old is better known to millions as the fiancé of a 39-year-old woman who was, for years, the biggest pop star in the world, control over whose personal life and $60 million estate was,13 years ago, stripped from her and reassigned to her father (and a court-appointed lawyer to co-manage finances) in a controversial and secretive arrangement from which she has been forcefully and publicly trying to extricate herself; a woman who has been, for years, photographed in the regular company of no adult save Mr. Asghari, and whom he declined to acknowledge, by name or even oblique reference, as a condition of granting an interview. That Mr. Asghari’s extremely famous fiancée, Britney Spears, is engaged to marry him is one of few details about her private life that is public knowledge. Both have said in interviews that they met in 2016 when he appeared in a music video for her single “Slumber Party” (featuring Tinashe), in the role of contemplative observer as she crawls down a banquet table to lap up what appears to be spilled milk. Since then, the pair have shown themselves together many times on their Instagram accounts — typically engaged in a physical fitness activity, relaxing in a cloudless vacation spot, mugging to the camera at close range or some configuration of all three. The couple announced their engagement on Instagram in September (he with a photo; she with a compilation of clips in which she flashed her diamond ring to the camera). But particulars relating to virtually every other aspect of Mr. Asghari’s fiancée’s life are known only to individuals with access to confidential court records pertaining to the conservatorship that governed her existence since 2008, and was terminated by a judge this week. Her relationship with Mr. Asghari necessarily sprouted within the parameters of this legal contrivance, the terms of which are so thoroughly concealed that, for more than a decade, outsiders could only guess as to how anyone in her circle — let alone how she herself — felt about it. Then Mr. Asghari spoke out. On Feb.9,2021, he posted an Instagram Story — a temporary item that disappears after 24 hours — with text that read, “I have zero respect for someone trying to control our relationship and constantly throwing obstacles in our way.” The ostensible target of his ire was his girlfriend’s father, the custodian of her estate, to whom Mr. Asghari referred by name in the same message, using an obscenity. Mr. Asghari’s flouting of the presumed omertà that muzzled discussion, or even acknowledgment, of the conservatorship from anyone it directly affected left spectators ravenous to hear more from him. Mr. Asghari obliged, after a fashion. He posted information on Instagram about a home teeth whitening system, the Submersible Bronzo Blu Abisso 42mm watch from Panerai, Smrtft adjustable dumbbells and a custom-built Jeep Rubicon. He uploaded images of himself modeling and videos of himself working out. He shared clips and trailers for TV shows in which he had been cast in bit parts as sundry devastatingly handsome men. He has also continued to post about his support for his fiancée; on Friday, he shared a photo of himself flexing, wearing a #FreeBritney T-shirt. But none of his posts satisfied onlookers’ most pressing curiosities: Who is Mr. Asghari? What is his life like? And how did any of this happen? On a Friday in October, Mr. Asghari arrived at a predetermined location in downtown Los Angeles for a photo shoot and hourlong interview, and was joined by his publicist, Brandon Cohen (reticent; black T-shirt; frequently holding phone to ear), and his creative director, who goes by Maxi (garrulous; pink plaid suit; frequently everywhere). In advance, Mr. Asghari had agreed to teach his interviewer some of the action stunt work he has been working to master. This would provide a natural foray into a discussion of his career goals (action stardom). Yet, on the day, this plan fell apart completely, its individual components skidding out of reach in previously undiscovered directions. For instance: Upon learning that the interview contained no video component — there had never been a video component — Maxi and Mr. Cohen professed disbelief and skepticism that Mr. Asghari’s stunt demonstrations could be expressed in any format but one designed for the broadcast of moving visual media. At the suggestion that the essence of the stunts, as well as specific maneuvers, could be described in writing and then pictured by the reader, Maxi voiced strong doubt, “because I have a vivid imagination,” he said, and “I can’t visualize it” — and his dubiousness meant that the stunt demonstration was never attempted. Mr. Cohen and Maxi also understood the interview to have different start times; according to one of the timelines, a photographer, who arrived for the shoot exactly on time, was either 45 or 90 minutes late. At one point, Maxi declared that the hourlong interview would take 15 minutes. In conversation, Mr. Asghari — who moved to California from Iran at age 12 to live with his father, who had emigrated seven years earlier — was pleasant.
