Director Kevin Macdonald presented WHITNEY - the documentary that dives deep into the life of Whitney Houston - at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
The highly anticipated project will uncover details about the late singer's life we didn't know about.
According to Whitney's brother Gary Houston, the Grammy award winning singer endured sexual abuse during her childhood (between the ages of 7-9) by a female family member.
Kevin said while working on the film, he could feel something had happened to Whitney in her past because she never looked comfortable in her own skin in the interviews he studied of her and said her body language reminded him of "people I’d seen who had suffered from abuse."
"I didn’t know whether that was true," Kevin told Deadline. "And then I interviewed Pat Houston and Gary Houston, who’s Whitney’s brother. He told me that he was abused by a woman in the family, and Pat Houston told me that, yes, Whitney had said to her, 'This is what happened.'"During his next interview with Gary, he declared who the man was. Kevin said he went back if he should reveal the identity of the abuser and explain how he came to the conclusion to inform the world:
In the end, we felt that we had three different people saying this. One of them, Gary, was also abused by [the same woman]. So, we felt that having direct testimony of somebody saying, “This happened to me” meant that even if by some incredible stretch of the imagination, Whitney had been lying to everybody else about it, that there was no reason not to go public about it. All the experts I spoke to about this area and this issue told me that it’s best to talk about these things and best for them to be out. That is the current thinking: it may prevent other people being abused in the future, it may give people the courage to come forward and say, “This happened to me, and this was the person who did it.” So there was some nervousness about it to begin with because I didn’t expect to be making a film about somebody who was an entertainer to lead to such a dark place. But once we got there, I felt like we had an obligation to use this.Dee Dee Warwick passed away in 2008.
Kevin said he also talked to Whitney's assistant assistant, Mary Jones, who shared Whitney's view of childhood abuse. She felt that it was important to share so that fans could understand Whitney. Everyone is frightened to talk about it. And Whitney never told her mother, Cissy Houston, because she was afraid. In speaking of Mary, she also shared funny details that led to the moment she found the singer dead, facing a bathtub inside the Beverly Hilton in 2012. LA Times writer Amy Kaufman shared some spoilers from on screening about what fans can expect from The movie.
In the newest documentary trailer, there's a scene where Whitney shades the hell out of Paula Abdul.
"One thing, Paula Abdul ain't sh*t," Whitney said in the clip. "That girl is singing off-key on the record."
The film also confirmed Whitney's alleged lesbian relationship with her longtime friend /assistant Robyn Crawford.
In the film, friends and family alleged the sexual abuse she endured from Dee Dee Warwick is what ended up driving her to drugs and to also question her sexuality.
Robyn was supposed to sit down with Kevin Macdonald to do an interview, but it never happened. Whitney's ex-husband Bobby Brown does appear in the film.
The documentary al revealed Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown's late daughter Bobbi Kristina tried to commit suicide when her mother was alive by cutting her arms:
Peep the new trailer below:
WHITNEY hits theaters July 6th. Will you be going to see it?
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