Lizzo opened up like never before in her HBO Max documentary Love, Lizzo from director Doug Pray —even going so far as introducing viewers to her partner Myke Wright, who appears in the film.
Going into this project, the four-time Grammy winner admits that she didn’t plan out what she was willing to share, saying “it would have been a disservice to the film.”
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“I didn’t really have a story in mind; I was just living,” Lizzo said during a panel for the Apple TV+ series at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted event. “It was important that I move as if there are no cameras here, that I live my life and be authentically myself because these are memories for me. Who wants to look back at all this footage and see that I was faking it or I was holding back? That’s not even fun for me to watch. I really want to applaud Doug for turning this into a story because there was so much life happening. … [The team] did such a great job of turning this into something succinct and poignant and masterful, so I’m really proud of it.”
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When Pray met Lizzo in 2020, he already was familiar with her music thanks to his daughter — a huge fan — who “forced” him to listen to her hits. As a fellow musician and someone with experience making music docs, the stars aligned for the collaboration.
“I met her team, and they asked me to help her tell her story,” he said. “It wasn’t like one day I just said, ‘Oh, I’m going to do a doc on Lizzo’; this is her story. It was very clear to me that I wanted to help Lizzo tell her story.”
Lizzo has done a great job of protecting her relationship with Wright and felt the time was right to let her fans meet him. Although details about the man in her life recently made headlines thanks to sneaky paparazzi, Love, Lizzo was even better than going Instagram official.
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“I can’t be shy about it anymore,” she replied with a giggle when asked about Wright. “There was a lot of footage, but we didn’t realize it was going to — I didn’t know I was going to get certain phone calls or that certain things were going to happen. I didn’t know that I was going to be crying or whatever. I didn’t want to automatically stop my life from happening because I’m filming a documentary, it isn’t fair to me. I fully live life, honey, so it was a choice.”
She continued: “Doug, my managers and I had a lot of conversations about how much Myke is going to be in this film. I do believe in people should tell their own stories, and Myke isn’t a famous pop star like me. He deserves the opportunity to introduce himself to the world and tell his own story. I think that we did a beautiful job telling my side of the story without necessarily speaking for Myke.”
Doug told Lizzo during the panel: “The fact that you’re so honest, it was such a blessing. I’ve worked with a lot of different subjects, and Lizzo, you’re just so completely comfortable with a camera that the wall is gone. During a lot of our filming, she would just go alone just with the camera and I wasn’t in every room.
“What you’re saying about being nonstop passionate about your own work and your music is so evident. … These docs are hard because a lot of people get to the end of the doc and we need to make some conflict to make it more honest. That never was a discussion with Lizzo ever — ever.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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