Scooter Braun on Justin Bieber's Tough Times: 'It Was Far Worse Than People Realize'

Justin Bieber‘s manager Scooter Braun is opening up more about his rough couple of years.

“The outsiders don’t really know what was happening. It was far worse than people realize,” Scooter told the NYT. “And when he is ready, he will tell what he was going through. But it’s a hard thing to watch someone you care and genuinely love go through that. I’m really, really happy that’s over.”

Scooter said it took a long time for anything to change and before he booked new projects for Justin.

“As I started to see it going in the wrong direction, I started to prepare,” Scooter said. “I put deals in place where he was protected for the long run. And I started to prepare my company to scale, because I was not going to let him work. [After 2013's Journals] he wanted to tour, and I honestly at that time felt, if he toured, he could die….I was trying to do that job for a year and a half, and I failed every single day. It wasn’t until something happened that it clicked for [Justin]. He made the conscious decision as a young man: “I need to make a change in my own life.”

Scooter added, “I decided I needed six months of that. I looked at Robert Downey Jr. and all these people – when you ask for redemption, people will give it to you. But if you’re the boy who cried wolf, they’ll destroy you. Once I saw there was consistency I said, O.K., now it’s time to go back in the professional life. The click happened about 20 months ago. Six months after that, you start seeing me planning a [Comedy Central] roast. And then the Calvin Klein ads come, and the roast comes…”