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Netflix's much-anticipated Anna Nicole Smith documentary: Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me unpacked the life of the late model through interviews with people who knew the "real" her. Born Vickie Lynn Hogan, the star adopted the name "Nicky" during her time at the strip club, before becoming a household name as Anna Nicole Smith after landing a modelling gig with Guess. "I want audiences to understand that Anna Nicole was a complex woman," director Ursula Macfarlane (Untouchable) said. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter "She was someone who above all else wanted to be a good mother and a free-spirited exuberant woman who wanted to live life on her own terms. But her story is also a cautionary tale about how the desire for the American dream can swallow you up and spit you out, blurring your self-image and make you lose sight of your authentic self." Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me | Official Trailer | Netflix www.youtube.com Here's what we learnt from Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me: Her troubled childhood Smith's friend, Missy, said the model described her mother, Virgie Mae Hogan, as a "kind of a tyrant" with claims she would tie her to the bed and "beat her mercilessly." Her former assistant Nathan Collins went on to suggest Smith "didn't like to speak about her childhood," and instead would rather speak about how much she "hated" them. "She would always tell me, she hated her mother," designer Pol' Atteu added. "The only thing I knew that Anna ever wanted to do was never to be like Virgie." Despite claims, her younger brother Donald Hart suggested their mother was "a very sweet, loving person" and she and Smith "cared about each other" even if they didn't speak "behind the scenes." In unheard footage from Smith's mother, she alleged that her daughter thought a harrowing story would benefit her career. Smith hired a private investigator to track down her father, Donald Hogan. He was flown out to meet her aged 24 to celebrate becoming Playmate of the Year. "She told me that her father had tried to have sex with her," an emotional Missy claimed. "I was really sad to see that. She was so so disappointed." She got married at 17 and had a baby out of loneliness "I thought I was in love," Smith said about Billy Wayne Smith who she met at Jimmy's Fried Chicken before tying the knot. She went on to suggest "he was so, so jealous of me," and alleged she wasn't able to leave the house, which made her think: "If I have a baby, I'll never feel lonely again." The pair welcomed their son Daniel in January 1986, and Smith left six months later. Smith knew she was going to be a "famous model" Smith repeatedly told her friend Missy, who she met during her time at the strip club, that she was going to be a model. However, Smith believed her chest was holding her back. The then-dancer then went under the knife after making it her "mission to get a boob job", with Missy saying that's where "she started on her pain pills." "Valium, Xanax, Lortabs, Vicodin and Klonopin," Missy claimed. "From that time on, she was taking them. There was nothing she could do to stop it." Despite her struggles, Missy described Smith as "fun". "She had a big heart, and she was kind. She really was kind," she added. Her marriage with billionaire J Howard Marshall Smith met one of her billionaire clients J Howard Marshall while dancing. The then 86-year-old bought a 26-year-old Smith a house and a car, as she quit the strip club. She went on to land a gig with Playboy before adopting the name Anna Nicole Smith while modelling for Guess. They eventually did marry in 1994 and Marshall wanted to adopt her son to have an heir so "there would be nothing that his family could do to freeze them out." Smith's attorney Kelly Moore was "impressed" by the pair's love for one another and how "well-suited" they were. Moore said she does not want to give the impression it was a "gold digger" relationship. Moore described Smith as "such a young, voluptuous woman and he was a little old gnome of a man. But they were both kind of extraordinary people that other people were always trying to take pieces of." She said they were "protection for each other." Smith's final months Her son Daniel died in September 2006 from an accidental drug overdose, days after giving birth to daughter Dannielynn Birkhead. The news devastated Smith, with designer Pol' Atteu recalling: "She didn't want to live. Everything that she did was for Daniel. Every single conversation was what she did wrong, blamed herself the whole time. She said, 'I just want to die. I don't deserve to be here. It should've been me.'" Smith died aged 39 on 8 February 2007, with an autopsy revealing it was down to combined drug intoxication including the sleep aid chloral hydrate. The star was laid to rest in the Bahamas next to her son in the Bahamas. Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me is available to stream on Netflix now. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Comedian turned commentator Russell Brand has weighed in on the ongoing wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, flouting conspiracy theories in his usual fast-paced, flamboyant style which are so outlandish, that he’s being compared to GB News anti-vaxxer Neil Oliver. Brand, who’s switched appearances on comedy films such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek for his Stay Free podcast in recent years, uploaded a video to his six million subscriber strong YouTube channel on Thursday with the title, “Something Doesn’t Seem Right”. As the baseless conspiracy theory that the devastating crisis on the US island was not aided by climate change but rather a ‘space laser’ continue to spread online, Brand jumped in and dismissed those rightly questioning such a nonsensical argument. “Now, some people would say, ‘Oh, that’s dangerous misinformation – that should be shut down.’ I think the opposite. “Discuss it, look at it, investigate it. Either it’s true or it’s not true, we can decide for ourselves, let’s not get excited,” he says. We have, Russell – that’s kind of what journalists do for a job… Towards the end of the almost 23-minute-long video, Brand turns to the conspiracy that the fires in Hawaii were “started deliberately to benefit rich elites” such as the investment management company and financial services provider BlackRock. He continues: “Now look at the Ukraine war. Ukraine have already done a deal with BlackRock to rebuild their nation using BlackRock investment. “If you apply that mentality to this situation, if BlackRock end up benefitting from the fires in Hawaii, then the conspiracy is almost a redundant detail. Did they start it? Didn’t they start it? “Is it inevitable that the suffering of ordinary people leads to the benefit of rich elites and massive organisations like BlackRock and billionaires across the globe and why is Bill Gates buying all this agricultural land when he’s not a farmer?” Yes, that’s one whole sentence. “Doesn’t it all feel like a kind of macro-conspiracy that’s so diffuse, institutional, oddly abstracted and bureaucratically opaque, that sometimes you just want to simplify it into ‘they started this fire! They started it with a laser from space!’ “And whether it’s true or not, it not only feels true, in terms of its results it is kind of true. There is a conspiracy to keep you poor and benefit rich elites,” he vented, adding that the “next time there’s a pandemic” the elite are “gonna control you more”. In other news, thesauruses are in short supply around the world. And it’s Brand’s ranting about a shadowy elite and government control during a pandemic which has likely led to social media users on Twitter/X branding Brand (ha) a “frappucino Neil Oliver”, the GB News host who has long peddled conspiracy theories about vaccines and an impending “one-world government”. Back in August 2021 he said he’d happily catch Covid – y’know, an actually deadly virus – “for the sake of freedom”, just so you know the kind of dangerous nonsense we’re dealing with here. Others, however, have pointed out to user Matthew Dimitri – who shared a clip of Brand on X – that Brand was actually making an argument about elites and organisations benefitting from natural disasters like the one in Hawaii, and that Dimitri has “misrepresented” Brand: Except instead of rejecting the laser conspiracy theory outright, remember, Brand said he ‘thinks the opposite’ and that instead we should “discuss it, look at it [and] investigate it”, which isn’t a complete dismissal of the idea. He doesn’t really give a definitive answer on whether the claim is true or not, but rather suggests that the result of the whole ‘is it or isn’t it’ debate is more important, as if it’s part of a broader conspiracy or distraction “to keep you poor and benefit rich elites”. Perhaps a far more compelling argument around all this is that Brand should learn to keep things succinct, for the benefit of everyone... Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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