More than two decades after Britney Spears' unforgettable 2001 VMA performance, the snake handler reveals what really happened behind the scenes -- and why the stunt was far more dangerous than fans ever knew.

On September 6, 2001, Britney Spears walked onto the MTV Video Music Awards stage and changed the face of live performance as we know it.

At just 19-years-old, Britney walked out of a cage with a real-life tiger by her side and launched into her sultry new single, 'I'm a Slave 4 U'.

But it wasn't the tiger that people remembered. It was the Burmese python draped across Britney Spears' shoulders, an image that instantly became one of the defining moments in VMA history.

Looking back more than two decades later, Spears admits the stunt was every bit as terrifying as it looked.

"One of my favorite performances was with an albino python," she recalled on Instagram in September 2023, alongside a clip of the moment.

"I still remember how scared I felt when I was handed this snake and took the stage !!!"

At the time, Britney wasn't fully aware of just how risky her guest star really was. Pythons kill by slowly squeezing the air out of their prey, but according to Spears, no one on her team thought she needed to know that detail.

What she did know was that she had to keep dancing. "We thought the whole thing was going to be about the tiger," she told Entertainment Weekly back in 2001.

"I mean, I'm in a cage with a huge tiger! But no one says anything about that. The image of me with the snake -- that was the big thing."

The man who made the moment possible was snake handler Michael Hano, a former vice president of the New York Herpetological Society.

"[Britney] was extremely, extremely scared at first," Hano told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2021. "I was very impressed with the way that she was able to just focus and force herself to do what she needed to do.

"She's from Louisiana, and there are several types of venomous snakes down there and people do get bit sometimes. So, when I first showed up for the first rehearsal day, she was very frightened."

What made it harder was that Spears had to carry the python herself throughout the performance.

"Britney Spears is pretty small -- and she was going to be dancing with [the python]," Hano explained. "She had to position the snake on her shoulders by herself and dance around, and then she had to hand it off to a third person...

"It's easy to screw up that kind of thing. It could have been really risky," he added. "The snake could have mistaken her for prey."

At first, Hano wasn't even allowed to speak to Spears. "This is my first time face to face with her -- and I'm holding this python!" he recalled. "All of a sudden, she's not ready to do that. I could see that she was uncomfortable."

Eventually, he persuaded her team to let him have a few minutes alone with her. "It only took just a very few minutes -- where she was able to sit with me on the sidelines and realize that it's not a big deal to hold a snake.

"So, we did the rehearsal that day, and then ... they wanted to do an additional rehearsal with the snake, just so that she would get very comfortable with it."

By day two, Spears was joking with Hano, telling him she had 'broke out in hives' wherever the snake had touched her.

"Which is just really not possible," he laughed. But he said she impressed him with her professionalism. "She was very focused."

He continued: "I remember a couple of times when the director said, 'OK, everybody take five' and basically everyone walked offstage, and she kept by herself and you could kind of hear her counting: 'One, two, three, four...' She kept practicing her moves by herself, without the music playing. You could tell that she was a really hard worker."

Michael Hano later told TODAY he walked into the VMAs barely knowing who Spears even was: "I'm not really up on pop culture and stuff at all. I mean, I've worked with some of the most famous models or people in the world and I didn't know who the hell they were until afterwards.

"At one point, she said, 'He's not gonna bite me, right?' And my answer is always, and my agent hates me for this, 'Probably not.'" He added: "You're freakin' Britney Spears, you know, if this thing bites you, I think my career is over."

Hano was hired through an agent and didn't actually own the python himself -- it was borrowed from a contact.

On his way home in Manhattan, he bumped into kids hanging out on his stoop. "They knew that I handled animals and stuff, they used to have nicknames for me, in fact," he said.

"I was walking up the steps and the kids were like, 'Oh, you see that thing that Britney Spears just did?' I'm like, 'Oh yeah, the snake? I just did that. I'm coming home now from it. I got the snake in this cooler right here.' They didn't freakin' believe me so I took the snake out and the kids started taking pictures of it."

For Spears, the moment remains unforgettable, though not one she'd ever repeat. "It's insane! Why did I do that? It's so dumb!" she told E! News in 2016.