8 Bombshells From the New Documentary

Within the wake of the #FreeBritney motion and the reassessment of beforehand reviled cultural figures like Paris Hilton, there was a full reckoning with the toxicity of early-aughts media and tradition — how we publicly policed younger feminine stars’ our bodies and life selections, clucking our tongues with fake concern whereas on the similar time utilizing our talons to tear them aside. The newest well-known determine to be reconsidered on this new gentle can be one of the vital tragic: Brittany Murphy, the prodigiously gifted breakout star of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, who was swallowed up by the early-2000s tabloid-industrial complicated after which died of pneumonia and anemia at her Hollywood dwelling in 2009, on the age of 32.

On the time of her dying, Murphy was on a profession backslide, showing virtually completely in slashers and straight-to-video options. However just some years earlier she’d been an It Lady, co-starring in massively profitable movies similar to Lady, Interrupted; 8 Mile; Simply Married; and Uptown Women, and courting co-stars like Eminem and Ashton Kutcher. Her precipitous downfall is the main focus of What Occurred, Brittany Murphy?, a two-part HBO Max documentary which traces her early successes, vanity struggles, and sudden, puzzling dying. The thriller surrounding Murphy’s passing deepened additional when her husband, Simon Monjack, a third-tier Hollywood screenwriter, died of comparable causes lower than six months later.

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Watch What Happened, Brittany Murphy? on HBO Max here

What Occurred, Brittany Murphy? presents a reasonably simple narrative (although, produced by the horror juggernaut Blumhouse, it injects the opening and shutting moments with a spooky aptitude). The movie chronicles the upward trajectory of Murphy, an irrepressible little lady raised by a single mom, Sharon Murphy, in New Jersey, with massive goals of in the future turning into a well-known actor. Mom and daughter moved to Hollywood when Brittany was a preteen, and he or she rapidly started reserving small roles in sitcoms like Sister, Sister, The Torkelsons spinoff Nearly Dwelling, and Boy Meets World earlier than making her movie debut because the ungainly but lovable Tai in 1995’s Clueless. However insecurity set in quick. After receiving cruel suggestions from producers and brokers, Brittany gave herself an excessive makeover, dying her hair blonde and shedding a dramatic quantity of weight from her already petite body.

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Quickly, she began to land leading-lady roles, whereas turning into a tabloid mainstay throughout her relationship with Kutcher. However not lengthy after their cut up, her profession went right into a tailspin, with Brittany reserving fewer and fewer high-profile roles amid rumors of drug use and erratic habits on set, till her premature dying.

It wasn’t till after her passing that the general public realized Brittany had fallen into the grip of her Svengali husband, a British screenwriter and aspiring filmmaker who turned out to be little greater than a con man. However hindsight offers the movie a transparent perspective: Monjack, whereas an insidious drive in his spouse’s life, was removed from the one one guilty for her dying. What Occurred, Brittany Murphy? additionally casts its lens on the tradition at giant, revealing how Hollywood, the media, and the general public had been complicit in one other promising younger lady’s tragic demise. Here’s a rundown of probably the most explosive revelations from the movie.

1. Brittany’s excessive weight reduction probably performed a task in her dying.
Throughout her rise to fame, Murphy was topic to intense scrutiny from the media about her noticeably thinner look versus her Clueless days. The documentary sheds some gentle on her transformation, with individuals near the actress saying that an agent telling Murphy she was “huggable, however not fuckable” prompted her to lose quite a lot of weight. (Brittany herself recalled the humiliating second in an Interview journal characteristic.) The movie additionally reveals that the anemia that the Los Angeles County coroner decided to be a significant factor in Murphy’s dying was probably attributable to the truth that she was extraordinarily underweight. And relatively than obtain assist at dwelling, Murphy confronted additional criticism from Monjack, who reportedly inspired her all through their marriage to get cosmetic surgery and lose much more weight. “To develop an anemia of this nature, she was not consuming,” the coroner tells the filmmakers flatly. “How did all of this develop?” Not solely did Monjack foster Brittany’s grave situation, he additionally allegedly refused to take her to the physician when she fell critically unwell in her ultimate days.

2. Brittany’s mom and husband routinely slept in the identical mattress after she died.
What Occurred, Brittany Murphy? focuses a great deal on the connection between Murphy’s mom, Sharon, and Monjack, who turned extraordinarily shut after her dying. Sources near the duo — together with a Radar On-line reporter who interviewed Monjack at dwelling following Brittany’s dying — report that they slept in the identical mattress after the actress died, clinging to one another of their grief. A post-death picture shoot that includes Sharon and Monjack holding palms and staring into one another’s eyes seemed like “mother and father grieving versus a husband and his mother-in-law,” one insider says. A joint interview on Larry King Stay, through which each Monjack and Sharon Murphy seem extraordinarily disoriented, didn’t assist to quell rumors about their weird connection. (When King presses Monjack as to why he didn’t need an post-mortem on his spouse’s physique, Monjack says, “This pristine physique, curvy in all the best locations, with pores and skin like silk… How might I say ‘Lower it up’ in entrance of her mom?”) Whereas the movie doesn’t draw any definitive conclusions in regards to the nature of the connection between Monjack and Sharon, it presents sufficient proof — together with these creepy photographs — to recommend it was unsavory at greatest.

3. Simon Monjack had not one, however two, secret kids with different ladies.
In keeping with the movie, Brittany was not conscious throughout her lifetime that Monjack had secretly fathered two kids with different ladies: a daughter, Jasmine, in England; and a son, Elijah, in Paris. Whereas a few of Monjack’s members of the family and acquaintances knew of Jasmine, the movie marks the primary public assertion by Elijah’s mom, Elizabeth Ragsdale, on her relationship with Monjack, who proposed to her after which impregnated her in Paris within the Nineties. After abandoning Ragsdale with no phrase whereas she was nonetheless pregnant, Monjack lastly contacted her once more in 2007, proper after he turned engaged to Murphy, providing to purchase her a home. Ragsdale says within the movie that she believed Monjack’s intention was to purchase her silence. “The stakes had been quite a bit increased with him being married to Brittany,” says Ragsdale. “He didn’t need anyone to know I used to be on the market together with his son.”

4. Monjack was a serial fabulist who advised individuals, amongst different issues, that he’d had terminal most cancers that he cured with an experimental shark-cartilage therapy.
Within the movie, Ragsdale says that Monjack advised her he was affected by spinal most cancers and wanted shark cartilage therapies in an effort to get better. It wasn’t till Monjack had deserted her whereas she was pregnant that Ragsdale contacted Monjack’s mom, Linda Monjack, and realized the story was bogus. Linda, who’s interviewed within the movie, defends her deceased son on this regard, saying that he had developed excessive paranoia after his personal father’s dying of most cancers: “I actually don’t assume he went out to inform individuals he had most cancers. I believe he believed it.” However Ragsdale wasn’t the one one he fed this lie. Previous to Monjack’s relationship with Britany, he met filmmaker Allison Burnett at a cocktail party, the place he advised the assembled friends that he was a billionaire with the world’s largest assortment of Vermeers; that he had dated Elle MacPherson and Madonna; that he had a set of Ferraris; and that he’d been dying of mind most cancers till he bought a therapy derived from shark fins that saved his life.

5. Monjack spent $3 million of Brittany’s cash in three years.
Following Monjack’s dying, Sharon Murphy requested her publicist to pawn jewellery that Monjack had given Brittany, together with a duplicate of Audrey Hepburn’s tiara in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in order that she might pay her payments. Sharon’s publicist, Roger Neal, had the objects appraised by two of his high-end purchasers within the jewellery enterprise, just for them to inform him that each one of it was faux and nugatory, leaving Sharon primarily destitute. All advised, Monjack spent an estimated $3 million of Brittany’s cash over a interval of simply three years. “He lived off this lady who had labored her coronary heart out for each penny she had,” a former affiliate says.

6. Monjack managed each side of Brittany’s life, turning into her agent, enterprise supervisor, and even make-up artist.
Following the traditional patterns of a home abuser, Monjack lower Brittany off from all of her outdated mates and lifelines as their relationship progressed, in response to a number of individuals interviewed within the movie. He took over her e mail account and confiscated her telephone, and assumed full management of her cash. However he wasn’t content material simply to rule her private life: Not lengthy after they wed, Monjack fired Brittany’s total skilled staff and have become the only supervisor of her profession, negotiating her intercourse scenes (one director says she refused to do a deliberate kissing scene till he threatened, inside earshot of Monjack, to have her changed), and even doing her make-up on film units.

7. Brittany’s struggles with medication had been worse than the general public knew on the time.
Instantly after Murphy died, there was hypothesis of a drug overdose, principally due to how younger she was on the time. However whereas she was not a recognized addict, for years there had been whispers amongst Hollywood insiders that Murphy grappled with substance abuse. A number of individuals interviewed for the movie reported seeing Murphy excessive and glassy-eyed on set and at business occasions, alleging that she and Monjack would keep up all evening doing downers after which take stimulants within the morning to stave off exhaustion. It was throughout these late-night binges that Monjack would encourage Murphy to take part in creepy picture shoots, the place he would “gown her like a doll,” says one Individuals journal reporter. The Los Angeles County coroner additionally stories within the movie that he discovered 90 prescription bottles on Monjack’s bedside desk the evening of Brittany’s dying, a number of in “third-party names” like Lola Manilow, which he presumed had been aliases.

8. Perez Hilton predicted Brittany’s dying.
One of many architects of early-2000s media tradition was Perez Hilton, the gossip blogger recognized for giving celebrities vulgar names and crudely drawing white strains close to their noses and mouths to indicate they had been drug customers. In a revelatory sit-down with the filmmakers, Hilton reveals that he had advised a radio station in 2009, shortly earlier than Murphy’s dying, that she could be the celeb that may be the following to die within the coming yr. Hilton appears genuinely remorseful for having made the grim prediction, and for the function he performed in constructing the tradition that put Murphy on a pedestal solely to brutally knock her down. “All these years later now, I remorse saying that, placing that power on the market. It’s gross… however that’s undoubtedly telling of the time — 2009, in some ways, was a really gross time,” he says.

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