Anna Nicole Smith was one of the most desirable, controversial and tragic women of the ’90s. Seemingly a male fantasy come to life and a glamour magazine fixture, Smith would ultimately come to her end as the result of a drug overdose at the age of 39, her career in tatters, her final years marred by vicious legal battles over her late billionaire husband’s estate.
Now her full story will be told with the release of a new documentary, Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me, which launches on Netflix on May 16.
Directed by Untouchable‘s Ursula Macfarlane, Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me promises to be an “unflinching and humanising” account of the model’s life. Combining never-before-seen footage and in-depth interviews, the film traces her rise from her troubled Texas childhood through to her instant fame as a model for Playboy and Guess Jeans. There’s also her sporadic acting career (she was in The Hudsucker Proxy!), her controversial marriage to plutocrat J. Howard Marshall (a sprightly 89 at the time, while Smith was 26), her battles with mental health and addiction, and more.
Still, we must wonder whether this will be a humanising or sordid take on Smith’s scandal-wracked life, the model’s later years in particular being the very stuff of salacious gossip column fodder. It’s also worth remembering the furore that erupted the last time Netflix told the story of a famous dead blonde—Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, easily one of the most argued-over mainstream films of recent memory.
Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me is a documentary rather than a fictionalised take, but it’s clear that finding the right angle from which to approach the subject is tricky. Nonetheless, we’ll be tuning in to this one when it drops – but we may feel a little guilty about it.
