Anna Nicole Smith’s ex, Larry Birkhead, is condemning the new Netflix documentary Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me, calling it an “overwhelmingly poorly reviewed cesspool.” Birkhead didn’t mince words as he spoke to Entertainment Tonight about why he and Smith’s 16-year-old daughter, Dannielynn, declined to be a part of the documentary, which started streaming Tuesday, May 16.
Birkhead said the main reason he refused to participate in the documentary was to protect his teenage daughter. “We declined to participate as I did not want my daughter in an overwhelmingly poorly reviewed cesspool of a project about her Mother, where some people were allowed to invent things and rewrite history,” the photographer said, adding, “I am 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. Anna truly deserved better and that day will come.”
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Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me,ย directed by Ursula Macfarlane, is described as “an unflinching and humanizing examination of the life, death and secrets of Vickie Lynn Hogan, better known as model and actress Anna Nicole Smith,” who found her way into the spotlight following her 1992 Playboy debut and whose life was “brought to a tragic halt with her untimely passing in 2007.” In addition to Smith’s early career, the documentary also looks into the model’s relationship with late husband J. Howard Marshall, the death of her son, Daniel Smith, and her struggles with substance use.
“A big desire for this film is that people will tune in partly because of the glitz and the glamour and the gorgeousness and the color and the tabloids and all of that stuff that we know about,” Macfarlane told Yahoo Entertainment of the film’s aim, “but they come away with a much deeper understanding of a human being. …So perhaps viewers go in for scandal and gossip, but come away feeling they’ve gotten to know a real woman.”
Prior to the documentary’s release, Birkhead deleted all of the photos of himself and of Dannielynn from their joint Instagram account, leaving behind only a photo of a beach with the caption, “Waiting for some of the waves to pass…. then will return.”
