Britney Spears reflected on the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards in her latest #ThrowbackThursday post and shared which animal she was most scared of during her performance.

On Thursday (Sept. 23), Spears reflected on the time she spent at the awards show two decades earlier, but the photos had nothing to do with her iconic "I'm A Slave 4 U" performance and everything to do with the dress she was wearing on the red carpet and while being interviewed alongside Mick Jagger. And while one of the undeniable stars of Spears' iconic 2001 VMAs performance was the 7-foot albino Burmese python draped around her shoulders -- which the performance's snake handler Mike Hano told Yahoo Entertainment recently that Spears claimed gave her "hives" during rehearsal -- the lion in the cage certainly amplified her pre-show nerves.

"Geez ... this is me before my VMAs performance with @MickJagger 20 years ago !!!! This is one my my favorite dresses I've ever worn and it's simple black lace !!!! I will tell you this ... before I went on that night I was feeling kinda out of body with nerves ... I mean ... I was in a cage with a live lion !!!!! I will never forget the moment before I went in the cage !!!!" she captioned the series of throwback photos of her and The Rolling Stones frontman.

Spears credited her then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake for giving her some much-needed words of encouragement before the performance. "Justin saw I could hardly talk so he held my hand and gave me a 5 minute pep talk which obviously worked!!!!!" she wrote.

Her reflection comes nearly two weeks after the 2021 VMAs on Sept. 12, which is the day she announced to the world via Instagram that she and longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari were engaged.

Relive the 2001 VMAs with Spears' latest post below.