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“A lot of people were trying to take control of my narrative and tell my story, so that’s why I even agreed to do the documentary in the first place.”
Speaking in front of a packed crowd at Los Angeles’ TCL Chinese Theatre on Wednesday, Megan Thee Stallion made her biographical vision clear. At her film’s premiere, she explained why she had dared to put her life story on the big screen at just 29 years old.
“Let me just tell my truth and lay it out on the table, because y’all don’t respect shit else but raw and honesty,” she said. “I was trying to be a cookie-cutter celebrity for y’all, but it didn’t work out… so y’all are about to experience Megan Pete for the first time.”
In the documentary, Megan Thee Stallion peels back the curtain of her glamorous rapper persona to tell a candid story of ambition, sorrow and triumph. It is raw, intimate and heartfelt.
“Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words,” a memoir-style documentary directed by Nneka Onuorah, offers what its Amazon MGM Studios description calls “unprecedented access” to the multifaceted Houston native, who hustled to reach hip-hop success in just a few years after her rapper momager, the late Holly “Holly-Wood” Thomas, planted the seed during her childhood. The film, which premiered on Prime Video on Oct. 31, follows Megan “on the road to stardom as she tenaciously navigates fame, grief, pressure, and success,” according to the blurb, and uses creative animation to illustrate what cameras didn’t catch.
For the past few years, we’ve witnessed in real time what Megan has achieved and endured. But between the Grammy wins, No. 1 records and critical acclaim, she also suffered great loss.
In March 2019, Megan’s mother died suddenly from a brain tumor. She lost her great-grandmother just weeks later. The following year, Megan was embroiled in a high-profile scandal after her ex-friend, rapper Tory Lanez, shot her after a pool party and tried to convince the world he didn’t. He was convicted in December 2022 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, a heart-wrenching moment captured in the documentary.
But between that time and the shooting, critics ridiculed Megan online and claimed she had either lied about being shot or was trying to “bring a Black man down.” Hateful social media comments and a frenzy of misinformation spread by bloggers and podcasters sent the rapper on a downward spiral that forced her to find refuge at a mental health retreat before Lanez’s trial, according to the documentary. But she fought back, reclaiming her story.
A day before her documentary debuted, Megan sued blogger Milagro Gramz for allegedly engaging in a years-long cyber smear campaign that spread “falsehoods” about the shooting. In a statement, the rapper said: “It’s time to hold bloggers accountable for years of harassment, cyberbullying and the publication of misinformation about my personal and professional life… It’s unacceptable behavior and these individuals need to understand there will be repercussions for recklessly posting lies and defamatory falsehoods.”
The lawsuit and Megan’s documentary show how she has sought to set the record straight on her story. Director Onuorah says the rapper tasked her with capturing the essence of her spirit so people could finally understand her perspective.
HuffPost spoke to Onuorah about her approach to Megan’s documentary, filming her most vulnerable moments behind closed doors, and how the rap star aimed to regain her power in the face of her detractors.
Amazon Prime Video
Artist documentaries involving the artist can easily become vanity projects that gloss over nuance, but this documentary feels like an exception. Whose idea was it to be so candid and transparent in telling Megan’s story?
Nneka Onuorah: Well, I think we both wanted to be candid and transparent in this film. That’s what we made it for. This film wasn’t a fluff piece, and it also wasn’t a film where anyone was telling anyone how it should be made. I got to make the film that I saw in this case, and it was about really getting a portrait of what it is like to go from a disempowered state to an empowered state and how you can use your own internal power to work through all the shadows and doubts of yourself to become your highest, strongest, most open self. I think showing a feminist manifesto is really what this was to be an example of. Megan Thee Stallion just happens to be the subject of the film, but if you took [her] out of it, this is something that women and Black women experience all the time. We experience grief and down times in the midst of our highs, so how do we navigate that dichotomy when it comes at you in life? That’s why we use anime to help support that story.
Talk about the importance of distinguishing between Megan Pete and Megan Thee Stallion in this documentary.
Onuorah: They both represent two different things. Megan Thee Stallion is the ultimate feminist icon, strength and power as we see it in the outside world. Megan Pete is just a beautiful young lady under 30 trying to navigate her life without her mommy and daddy. That is a very personal thing that many people could experience and relate to. It was very important to show how these two things could be true in one Black woman’s body. How we navigate both of those, sometimes Megan Pete needs to lean on Megan Thee Stallion. But what’s happening when everybody’s tearing Megan Thee Stallion down? Megan Pete needs herself. And so I really wanted to be able to show that juxtaposition of the two of their lives and how those two parts could support each other. How strength and vulnerability come together to make us our most empowered, beautiful selves, and I think Megan showed that exact example.
In the documentary, Megan talks about being closed off after the shooting because she didn’t know who to trust. How was she when you first met her? And how did you build that trust that allowed you to film some of her most vulnerable moments?
Onuorah: When I first met her… she was always kind, but she was trepidatious, and so one day, I just had to have a straight conversation with her. I was like, “Meg, we can’t keep showing up to things, and you’re not filming. What are your fears? Walk me through what you’re concerned about.” And so I really changed the creative [directive] to be: Anything [regarding] Megan Pete, I’m gonna film myself [without the rest of the team]. I’ve got to build that trust in that relationship as a filmmaker to artists so that you feel like you have a safe space. My team that I hired would film Megan Thee Stallion. But if [she was] in [her] home, in any place that you have to be Megan Pete, it would just be me and her. So I created the trust that way by really listening to her. Sometimes, you just need people to listen to you in order for them to understand you, and I think she knew I had a deep understanding of her at that point.
With this documentary, we weren’t burdened with a bunch of talking-head interviews like typical artist documentaries. Most of what we hear comes directly from Megan’s mouth. What was the intention behind that decision?
Onuorah: I think taking an observational perspective, with some questioning, allows not only for intimacy but for you to see the person. You’re not hearing people’s story through all these other voices — because they’re filtering it through their voice. In this case, Megan’s story [needed] to be at the forefront, so I needed to interact with her. I needed to study everything about how she operates, what makes her sad, what makes her excited, and that observational perspective allows you to be able to then put that on screen. And that’s psychology.
I use a lot of the techniques from school to figure out how to navigate this documentary, especially Carl Jung’s “shadow self” work, and also with feminist work, like Audre Lorde’s [“Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”]. The combination of those two is really an inspiration to my approach to this doc. And I always try to figure out how to break convention. I don’t like doing conventional things, so a lot of my work changes the narrative of that. And so this was [me] continuing to push the boundaries of how documentaries are made.
Something else that stood out was how the documentary highlighted the misinformation spread about Megan’s shooting and showed a lot of critics who were vocal about not believing her. Why was it important to show that opposition in contrast to Megan telling her side of the story?
Onuorah: To understand the internal conflicts, you have to also understand the external conflicts that are pushing those internal conflicts into fruition. Also, to tell a well-rounded story, I felt like it was important to see what Megan was experiencing from the inside of her life, but also to see what the noise was on social media (outside). I think compiling those social media moments together should be able to show us how negative and how much we can tear down people on social media. I wanted us, as a generation right now, to see how powerful this tool of social media is and how much it has an impact on mental health. We need to be accountable for the things that we say online because they do affect people. Whether it’s a celebrity or a non-celebrity, it’s deeply impactful.
In your opinion, what purpose should celebrity documentaries serve in this day and age?
Onuorah: They should really [help] people see the bigger picture of [anyone] going through anything, but to the max. Like I said, Megan Thee Stallion could have been anyone going through this experience, and it would be relatable. It just so happens that she’s on a public scale, so it allows us to expand on how many people wanna watch this experience. I think this film has changed the way that celebrity docs could be made. A lot of people have made them as fluff pieces or [because] “my album’s coming out.” This was not about any of that. This was raw storytelling. These were real things that were happening that she had to navigate. I want people to remember that. When you’re online talking about people, especially celebrities, it may seem like they’re a figure, but they’re human beings. And so you’re degrading a human being when you do things like that. So I hope [with this documentary], we think twice or three times about how we treat people and what we say about people online.
If Megan’s critics even watch the documentary, do you think they’ll change their tune about who they think she is? Do those opinions even matter to you or her?
Onuorah: I don’t think opinions matter to us. The documentary was a win when Megan Pete felt happy and empowered in herself. Everything else is just everybody observing and watching and seeing what you can learn from it. I think people will get a different side of Megan, a more intimate side of her, and get to know her. It’s been so positive online. People say, “Wow, I didn’t know this about Megan,” or “It’s been great getting to know her through this film.” So I’m excited for her, ’cause people are finally seeing her for who she is.
“Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words” is streaming now on Prime Video.
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