‘Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom’ Director Ryan Duffy on Star’s Charisma, Tragedies, Triumphs, and What’s Next (Exclusive)

Lamar Odom’s story has been told time and again. He lost his mother at a young age and used basketball as a way to escape the realities of his home life in Queens, New York. From there, his steady rise in the NBA was magnified by his whirlwind marriage to reality television queen Khloé Kardashian — leading to his the demise of his career and reputation due to his addiction to drugs, which resulted in a near-fatal overdose in 2015.

But Lamar always comes out on the other side. nd there’s a reason people root for him.

There are plenty of interviews and documentary specials centered on the ups, downs, and what’s next of Lamar’s life, but none quite like Netflix’s upcoming documentary, Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom. The documentary details everything already known with interviews with the key players who were there for it all, including the mother of his three children Liza Morales, who Odom dated for over a decade. She’s honest about the Lamar she knew and fell for. Also featured are Odom’s children, Lamar Jr. and Destiny, who share a different side of their father. Lakers icon Phil Jackson, Odom’s ex-wife Khloé Kardashian, and a host of family members and close friends give their take on the former sixth man of the year.

PopCulture.com spoke with the documentary showrunner/director Ryan Duffy on what makes this documentary about Odom different. He also spoke about surprising revelations, and the beauty in Odom not knowing what’s next. 

PC: How did the documentary come about, and what was the goal because Lamar’s ups and downs have been shared at length. What was the idea behind making this one different?

RD: Yeah, it’s a great question, and, and honestly, it’s what I think has kept us. So we make a show called Untold. We’ve been making it for the better part of 5 years at this point. And now that we’ve done the Lamar doc, I sit here going, “How did I make 20 episodes of this show without having done it?” But it’s the exact thing you said, which is that we kind of felt like it had been done. And I should say it has been done in terms of it has played out in the public eye, played out in front of cameras in large part. Lamar’s whole life did, that’s part of this story. 

I was speaking for myself a little bit tentative at first, but we got on a couple of Zooms with him, and it’s just there’s this charisma to him. We talked to Liza, his ex-fiancee, who was his high school sweetheart too, and she used that exact word. She said when he was 13, he had charisma. She was like, ‘I didn’t know that word at the time.’ But he had that gravitational pull. You want to be with him. So I kind of just was attracted to that. And if you love a person or subject with your eyes, the camera loves it too.

So you start thinking about it as a documentarian, and we just started exploring a story, and started talking to the people around him and I think I came away from it feeling that ultimately, yes, it had been done, but he’s now at a place in his life where he has a perspective that is different. The events are the same, but the perspective is different, and we thought we could round out the story with a lot of interesting voices that people as close to him as kids, Richard Hunter from the brothel. We felt like there was a compelling enough distance on Lamar’s part and a compelling enough surrounding cast of characters that there was a story to be told there.

So things take a turn when Lamar’s mom passes. His family, namely his aunt, is in the documentary. And as someone who has followed Lamar since his days with the Kardashians and after, it’s the first time that I think that I’ve seen his aunt, or anyone close to him besides his father or in-laws or friends. Was there any discussion – because I don’t feel like it was really touched on or made the edit about what his relationship to his family was like after his mother passed. His aunt did say that at the draft, there were several family members there, but what was that like after because he didn’t even invite them to the wedding?

I got the real sense that Lamar is one of those people – I think we all have them in our lives – and it goes back to this charisma thing, he is one of those people who comes in and out for people. When he’s in, he’s all in and he’s staying on your couch, and he’s there, and it’s like he never left. But then he does have these periods, and this is a recurring thing in his life where he’s just isolating – and that’s a function of addiction, isolation.  And I think I got the sense from his family, from Aunt Janine, who I just absolutely loved, it’s one of my favorite interviews in this whole doc. But also from even Liza and the kids that when Lamar’s there, he’s great, and we love him, and we’ve just now been through this for long enough that we know there will be periods where we’re not in touch. And we don’t know where he’s at, and he’s not picking up, and he’ll check in.

There’s this guy in the doc, Pumpkin, Anthony, he goes by Pumpkin, who has been friends with Lamar since they were 12 years old. It’s the same kind of relationship. When they talk, it’s like they’ve never missed a beat. But Lamar will go a year and change without talking to him. I got the sense that everyone in his life had just come to understand that as an immutable truth about having Lamar in your life. He’s gonna be in and out.

His life with Liza seemed a bit more stable. Even though he made some mistakes in the league in the infancy of his career, and getting fined for failing a weed test or having to miss games, things were relatively good. She’s been clear in different interviews that I’ve seen over the years that she was just unaware, she was just kind of in a bubble. She was really unaware of what this life as a basketball wife entailed and sort of like out of the loop of a lot of things that she was doing. And then obviously after the death of their son, things became strained. Did she speak to what her knowledge was of Lamar’s drug or party lifestyle, at all, during their relationship?

What Liza basically said is that she obviously was aware of a bit of weed use and she didn’t know about anything stronger. I don’t think she knew at the time about it. Obviously she has come to know all of the details now. I do think their son Jayden’s death death was a precipitating event, both in her telling of this and Lamar’s, Understandably. I would say that’s where things kind of took a darker turn. 

Lamar talks about his early brushes when he was with the Clippers and he was briefly suspended. It’s funny to look at that stuff today. That stuff wouldn’t even get written up in a newspaper today. Smoking weed? Who gives a shit. So that kind of stuff, I almost put in a bucket, and that’s separate. That’s a function of a different viewpoint we had on weed at the time as a culture, as the NBA did. As far as the cocaine, he talks about the turn from weed to cocaine as just kind of a change of environment, a change in the people he was hanging out with.

When he was smoking just weed, he was still hanging out with people from Queens. They were the people he grew up with. And they were smoking weed in their teens and early 20s.  It kind of didn’t change. When he went down to Miami, when he was living out in LA, when he was making money, he was around different people. And one thing I learned is that Lamar is endlessly influenced by his surroundings. That is something I really did come to believe. You mentioned that when he was with Liza, things were pretty good. I think that’s also true of the first couple years with Phil Jackson and Kobe that things were good. When he had structure, people like Kobe, people like Liza, he was his best self. When those things kind of moved away, when he got traded to Dallas, when Jayden died, he’s around different people, all different influences creep in.

I appreciated his honesty in this documentary because Lamar said from the very beginning or since they split that he loved being a Kardashian’s husband. He does not make any qualms about that. He loved the attention. He loved everything that came with it. But what was shocking to me is when Pumpkin said that marrying her was strategic on his part. It’s not that he didn’t love her, but he also knew that it would elevate him to another level and kind of give him that access and fame that he wanted. What can you say about that whole thing?

We’re never gonna know what’s in a guy’s heart, right? Take this for what it’s worth.  Pumpkin has his bit where he says it’s a little more strategic. Lamar said a number of times, ‘I just really loved Khloe.’ She has said they really loved each other. I’ve kind of come to believe Destiny’s version of it, his daughter Destiny, which she says is essentially, look, ‘Lamar did love Khloe, and he really wanted to be on reality TV.’ I think it’s a real situation and both things can be true. I think he did fall for her. 

We can all ask the question of how well you really know someone if you’re getting married after 30 days. I think that’s a fair question. He knows that’s a fair question. She knows that’s a fair question. I do also think that when you are in the kind of intoxicating world of superstardom and celebrity and athletic prowess and just adoration everywhere you go, maybe it is a little harder to delineate those emotions. What is true love? What is excitement? What is kind of the dopamine hit of fame? I think those things probably get blurry, and I think that’s the honest answer. 

It’s also funny too that everyone has always sort of talked about how the men in the Kardashian’s lives have benefited from them and their fame, but Khloe mentions in the documentary that Lamar was the breadwinner. She wasn’t earning any real money at that time, at least not to live the lifestyle that he provided. And at some point, she had to figure out how to take over when she realized his addiction was really on a downward spiral.

That was one of the things that I, not to say I was surprised, you can Google this, but I just hadn’t really thought of it in that way. Khloe Kardashian is so famous in my mind that it’s hard for me to see the 23 year old less successful version of her, but that’s who she was. And when she reminded me of that in the interview, I got it. And that helped me understand a little bit how she got in this position that she details in the doc of her following him around,  cleaning up after him, keeping his secrets. 

We’ve all had friends who are kind of in relationships where we think they’re enablers or whatever.One of the things that can happen is the person is in a position of power, and they are convincing you that they need you to protect them, because what they have benefits the both of you. And I do think there was that power dynamic that explains how Khloe got herself in the position of covering up for him for as long as she did.

Was there a reason why his relationship with his ex-fiance post Khloe was not discussed because that was a major media circus at the time. 

There is no specific reason other than you make some tough decisions over the course of a 70 minute film. There were a few people who we thought about early on and then it ended up not working. Richard at the end is such an interesting character, and you go to such a different world in Nevada. And then you want to make sure you get Phil Jackson and the basketball stuff up top, and in the middle the love life of Lamar. And I just also thought it’s an embarrassment of riches with Liza and Khloe in terms of filling in the blanks of his love life that any moment they’re not on screen because they’re both so great.

To this day, Lamar insists that he did not take any drugs while he was at the Love Ranch. Do you think that he thinks that that’s the case, or he’s just in denial?

Oh, it’s a tough question. I don’t know. I don’t know what he thinks. He says his drink was spiked, and he’s even gone further and said this was kind of a planned thing. I have no way of knowing that. I don’t think anyone’s ever found any proof for that to be the case. My feeling is basically that we’re never going to totally know. He did do cocaine in the time leading up to him going to stay at the Love Ranch. He’s been clear about that. He did drink that night, and he’s been clear about that. 

Richard says basically he took 12 of these enhancement pills that he’s supposed to take 1 of, and they’re probably expired because they’ve been in this dusty shelf for 5 years. What combination is it that created this horrible situation? Who knows? I also give Lamar the benefit of the doubt in the sense that he went from that night into a medically induced coma where not only did he not know what he took, he didn’t know his name. I bet he does believe it and it may even be true in his recollection of events, which is admittedly not completely clear.

How was it from his kids’ perspective, because we’ve rarely heard from them. And how does that kind of humanize Lamar even more? And what were the other surprising revelations that came out of this for you?

The kids were fantastic. I think they really are. Lamar, as you saw in the interview, he’s been in the bright hot spotlight for so long that he can come off a little stoic. He’s talked about all this stuff. He’s lived in the public eye. The kids, I think, feel more vulnerable, and they feel more honest because they’ve not done as much of this. So I think they do give you this emotional core of this story.

It’s easy to get caught up in the overdose and the Kardashians and the Lakers and Kobe and all this stuff. But there’s also just a guy here who has really struggled with addiction, and whose life has been marred by tragedy and death at almost every turn, and he is the father to two really wonderful kids who count on him, and there’s like a very human part of that that if you strip away all the Lakers, Kardashians, and everything else is. I think it’s really important. I was so grateful that they agreed to do it and they were fantastic interviews, obviously.

I don’t know totally what surprised me about it. I make these documentaries for a living and I have been doing so for a long time. And usually, the person at the center of them is really committed to convincing you of this kind of happy ending. They want their story to have this tidy bow at the end. With Lamar, I think I was surprised by just how honest he was. He feels like he had a near death experience and he survived. He feels strongly that there was divine intervention in that survival. And that means he needs to do something, but he doesn’t know what that is. He feels this pressure to make it worth it to justify living. But he’s still kind of feeling his way through that, and I think you feel that uncertainty at the end of the movie a little bit. And I think I was just surprised by that vulnerability, by that uncertainty, and by his willingness to just be comfortable in the discomfort of not knowing what’s next.

Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom will be available to stream via Netflix on March 31.