The ex-lover of Anna Nicole Smith is no fan of a new Netflix documentary about the rise and fall of the late Playboy model and reality TV star.
Larry Birkhead, who welcomed a child with Smith before her tragic death in 2007, has come out against “Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me,” which began streaming Tuesday.
The former couple’s 16-year-old daughter, Dannielynn, also didn’t participate in the film that, according to the streamer, “attempts to get to the heart of who Anna Nicole Smith was.”
“We declined to participate as I did not want my daughter in a overwhelmingly poorly reviewed cesspool of a project about her mother, where some people were allowed to invent things and rewrite history,” Birkhead said in a statement to Entertainment Tonight.
Producer and director Ursula Macfarlane uses never-before-seen footage, home movies, and interviews with relatives, journalists and other associates to shape the 117-minute documentary.
Birkhead said Smith “truly deserved better” and he remains hopeful that a more accurate project will see the light of day.
“I’m looking forward to a true definitive Anna Nicole project where her truth can be heard from her own perspective and by those that truly knew her the best and not just another ‘wash, rinse and repeat’ Anna Nicole project,” the 50-year-old photographer shared.
A pop culture phenom and tabloid sensation of the 1990s, Smith died of a accidental drug overdose at age 39 after a downward spiral that showed up in her eponymous reality TV show.
Born Vickie Lynn Hogan and raised in Texas, the buxom bombshell was a teen mom and ex-stripper who became a Playboy centerfold, a Guess jeans model and a reality TV trailblazer.
In 1994, she made headlines by marrying octogenarian oil tycoon Howard Marshall, who died a year later. Smith and his son had a years-long legal battle over his estate.
