Explore More
Anna Nicole Smith’s ex Larry Birkhead and their daughter, 16-year-old Dannielynn Birkhead, refused to work on Netflix‘s upcoming bombshell doc on the late Playmate.
Birkhead confirmed their non-participation in a statement to The Post, in which he said they are planning their “own special project” for future release.
“We aren’t involved in the Anna Nicole Netflix documentary,” Larry told The Post via email, adding that their own venture would be one with which they “can make sure that the people involved are truly connected with Anna and that we have a certain level of control over the way the story is told.”
The revelation comes after the streaming giant debuted a trailer for the upcoming documentary, titled “Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me,” which is poised to share the tragic life of the late model, who died of an accidental overdose in 2007 at just 39 years old.
Larry added that although they “love Netflix,” he revealed that “it gets tiring” to see projects like this one pop up time and again.
“I just decided to pass on this and do our own project using Anna’s archives that she left behind,” he told The Post. “You can’t get any more definitive than Anna in her own words! So, it was important for me to let Anna tell her own story.”
Larry claimed that they “passed” on the Netflix program “after discussions with production over who would and wouldn’t be included.
“I had to make that decision after seeing production after production following the same format and using the same people saying they were ‘friends’ with Anna,” he continued. “It’s important for me and I owe it to my daughter Dannielynn that only credible people are involved in Anna’s story and so I decided one way to get that assurance is to do our own project.”
Larry told The Post that his project will include “Anna’s personal diaries, journals. That is Anna speaking out in everything from life, love, loss of her husband J. Howard Marshall, finance highs and lows. Her thoughts on family and certain friends. They go back way before she was discovered when she was still Vickie Lynn living in Texas.”
He also said the project — which doesn’t yet have a timeline for production and release — will include never-before-seen home videos and photos of Anna and Dannielynn.
“Really just a ton of stuff; Anna was a hoarder,” he told The Post. “Usually that’s a bad thing but in this case, Dannielynn is learning a lot about her Mom as we go through things.”
Larry also added: “Dannielynn is actually having fun going through some of the old pictures and video of Anna as we have been starting on this journey.”
The Post has reached out to Netflix representatives for comment.
The upcoming Netflix film, which debuts May 16, will add to the growing number of films to take interest in the late star, who famously modeled for the likes of Guess and H&M.
Last year, Deadline reported that a biopic, dubbed “Hurricanna,” of the model was in the works. In 2013, the biopic “The Anna Nicole Story” was released, featuring Agnes Bruckner as the titular Smith.
“You Don’t Know Me” director Ursula Macfarlane said that she became “fascinated” by Smith after investigating her short yet tumultuous life.
“I think like most people, I had a cursory knowledge of who Anna Nicole was,” she told People. “The more I dug into her story, the more I discovered that a lot of what I watched and read over the years provided a one-dimensional look at Anna Nicole.”
“It’s been 16 years since she has died and it was time to dig beneath the surface,” she continued. “Society’s perspective has shifted on women in the media spotlight who pursue fame — and we need to lift up female and female-identifying survivors, instead of condemning them.”
Larry’s documentary will mark one of the rare moments in which Dannielynn will appear in the public eye, and on camera no less.
Larry is “very protective” of her, an insider told the Daily Mail recently, and has attempted to keep his young daughter away from the limelight, save for a few appearances at the Kentucky Derby gala over the years.
Now, the teen is “not a baby anymore” and is apparently “quite opinionated,” the source claimed.
“She’s going to talk about her mom from what she knows based on things that she’s seen, heard and read,” the insider said. “She is going to share her own personal feelings for the first time.”
Dannielynn was just 5 months old when Smith died from a deadly concoction of pills after suffering a 105-degree fever. The starlet was found unresponsive in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, more than 15 years ago.
Both Smith’s psychiatrist and boyfriend were later convicted of “conspiracy, excessive prescribing of opiates and sedatives to an addict and fraudulently obtaining drugs by using false names” in relation to her drug addiction.
The 1993 Playmate of the Year first gripped the masses when she married billionaire J. Howard Marshall II, then 89, in 1994. Smith was with Marshall during the last 14 months of his life and she was accused of marrying the mogul for his money despite publicly maintaining that she loved him.
“You Don’t Know Me” will explore the pair’s relationship and what followed — from their meet-cute at a Texas strip club where Smith worked in 1991, to the posthumous legal proceedings over Marshall’s estate.
Death was not unfamiliar to Smith. Her son, Daniel, who she shared with her first husband, Billy Wayne Smith, succumbed to an accidental overdose the year before her eerily similar and untimely death.
Macfarlane implored viewers to “have more empathy” for the stunner, who dazzled the public after becoming a household name.
“She was human, she was complicated, but she was always, truly, unapologetically herself,” she told People, championing the model for the woman and mother she was. “A funny, smart and kind free spirit who lived her life to the fullest.”
“She’s a woman who deserves our attention and our understanding,” the director added. “I want people to come away loving her as much as I do, but at the very least I want her to be appreciated as the multidimensional and deeply vulnerable woman she was.”
ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlf3R7j21manFflruvrYynoJynnJp6tLnIrZ%2BsZZWteqK6w2abmq2XncGmvoyrnJ%2Bto5p6tbuMmqepnZGneqq6jKecrZ6cnsVusM6cZg%3D%3D