Anna Nicole Smith’s ex Larry Birkhead and the former couple’s daughter, Dannielynn, are working together to create their own documentary of the model’s life using “never before seen” diaries and footage.
The news comes as Netflix released a trailer for “You Don’t Know Me,” which claims to interview some of Smith’s “closest friends.” However, Birkhead along with Dannielynn are not involved.
“Unfortunately we are not involved in this Anna Nicole Netflix project, however I am looking forward to telling Anna’s story in a way that Dannielynn and Anna’s fans will be proud of,” he exclusively told Fox News Digital.
Larry and Dannielynn Birkhead are not involved in Netflix’s upcoming documentary about the late Anna Nicole Smith, Fox News Digital can confirm. (Photo by Larry Birkhead)
Anna Nicole Smith died in 2007. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
There have been a handful of documentaries about the late model, who passed away in 2007 from an accidental drug overdose. Smith was born in Houston, Texas and began her modeling career as a Playboy Playmate. The model-turned-actress also went on to work for fashion houses such as Guess and H&M.
“There have been so many Anna Nicole projects and each time producers call and make the promise to tell Anna’s story in a different way. Then, there is a big disappointment when you see the actual show,” Birkhead explained.
“You always see the same clips and they usually find video of Anna on the red carpet to make her look crazy or the same award show clips and it becomes the cookie-cutter Anna Nicole production. Anna’s life was such a roller-coaster that there really is no need to invent things or take people at their words for varying claims.”
Dannielynn and her father Larry Birkhead attend the Kentucky Derby. (Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images)
ANNA NICOLE SMITH’S DAUGHTER, DANNIELYNN, TURNS 16: ‘MOM IS LOOKING DOWN’
Birkhead is the father of Smith’s daughter – Dannielynn, 16.
Shortly after Smith’s death, Birkhead was faced with a very public custody battle where he had to prove Dannielynn was indeed his child. Smith’s former lawyer, Howard K. Stern, had been listed as Dannielynn’s father on the birth certificate and had been fighting for custody. Frederic van Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, had also claimed he was Dannielynn’s father.
“My relationship with Anna sometimes was portrayed as I got lucky in the DNA lottery from a one night stand,” Birkhead previously told Fox News Digital. “And my relationship with her was actually two years plus and we covered a lot of territory in that. There [were] a lot of ups and downs.”
Birkhead first met Smith briefly in 2003 for the Kentucky Derby festivities in his home state. However, it wasn’t until 2004 – after Smith’s dramatic weight loss transformation – that the pair bonded in private.
“I couldn’t tell anybody that we were dating,” Birkhead previously explained. “It actually worked against me after she passed [when] I was still trying to prove paternity, even though I knew I was the father and Anna knew I was the father… but to the world, it was a mystery… I couldn’t talk about our relationship and there [weren’t] a lot of pictures of us and footage of us as a couple. She was supposed to be this kind of available sex goddess. That was her persona that she was supposed to be available and the object of everyone’s desire. It worked against me in so many ways.”
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Anna Nicole Smith during the 2005 MTV Australia Video Music Awards with Larry Birkhead in the background. (Getty Images)
Birkhead has kept Dannielynn out of projects involving her late mother when he believes the people behind them “aren’t credible.”
“In some of the past cases, the interview subjects shouldn’t be speaking about Anna’s life at all,” he told Fox News Digital Wednesday. “Some have portrayed themselves as ‘close friends’ or ‘family’ when in fact, Anna had very few friends and was unfortunately estranged from most all of her family.”
In order to tell Smith’s story in a way to be “proud of,” Birkhead, Dannielynn and Smith’s friends got together to tell it from her own voice.
“Anna left behind so many things that I thought it would be great to hear Anna’s voice in her own story using her never-before-seen personal diaries, journals and home videos and not just rehashed clips and roster of the usual suspects of ‘friends,’” Birkhead said. “It’s been an emotional journey going through all of the things with Dannielynn. She’s actually learning a lot about her Mom in the process.”
Anna Nicole Smith in a publicity portrait in 1994. (Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report.
