The pop icon reflects on her early days on the Disney Channel in her new memoir ‘The Woman in Me,’ excerpted here

‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ Cast. PHOTO: DISNEY/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

Getting cast on The Mickey Mouse Club changed Britney Spears’ life at age 11.

In her upcoming memoir The Woman in Me, the pop superstar, now 41, looks back on her time working alongside fellow stars-to-be like Christina Aguilera, Ryan Gosling and Justin Timberlake on the Disney Channel variety program.

“Being in the show was boot camp for the entertainment industry: extensive dance rehearsals, singing lessons, acting classes, time in the recording studio, and school in between,” writes Spears of the experience in the book.

T.J. Fantini, Tate Lynche, Ryan Gosling, Nikki Deloach, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake.EVERETT

“The Mouseketeers quickly split into our own cliques, divided by the dressing rooms that we shared: Christina Aguilera and I were the younger kids, and we shared a dressing room. We looked up to the older kids — Keri Russell, Ryan Gosling, and Tony Lucca, who I thought was so handsome,” she writes in the book. “And I quickly connected with a boy named Justin Timberlake.”

Spears adds in the book that working on The Mickey Mouse Club “was honestly a kid’s dream — unbelievably fun, particularly for a kid like me. But it was also exceptionally hard work: we would run choreography thirty times in a day, trying to get every step perfect.”

She recalls the cast’s time off-set, writing in the memoir, “[Once] at a sleepover, we played Truth or Dare, and someone dared Justin to kiss me. A Janet Jackson song was playing in the background as he leaned in and kissed me.”

Britney Spears’ The Woman in Me.

“When the show ended a year and a half later … I decided to go back to Kentwood,” writes Spears of her Louisiana hometown in the book. “Already within me was a push-pull: part of me wanted to keep building toward the dream; the other part wanted me to live a normal life in Louisiana. For a minute, I had to let normalcy win.”

Spears starred on The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993 through 1994. The series became a launchpad for young performers, as the “Toxic” singer and many of her castmates went on to become massive superstars.

The Woman in Me finds Spears detailing her journey from young starlet to mega pop star as well as her past relationships and “soul-crushing” experience under a conservatorship from 2008 through 2021.

“Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,” she tells PEOPLE via email in a new cover story interview. “After getting out of my conservatorship, I was finally free to tell my story without consequences from the people in charge of my life.”

Spears’ much-anticipated memoir The Woman in Me is set for an Oct. 24 release through Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

For an exclusive excerpt and interview with Britney Spears, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.