Paula Deen‘s sons were initially skeptical about their mother’s 2013 scandal being explored in a new documentary.
“My thoughts to mom were, I love you and I support you, but I don’t know if you’re going to get from this documentary what you hope to get,” Jamie Deen said of Canceled: The Paula Deen Story — which premiered at the at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, September 6 — in an interview with Deadline published on Thursday, September 11. “She said, son, I just want a chance to speak about it, which we really didn’t get, mom didn’t get 12 years ago.”
Paula’s younger son, Bobby Deen, said he had “reservations” of his own about participating in the film. “I was afraid of what might come to light or what [director] Billy [Corben] might unearth and put in the film because I felt like we had been so exposed already,” he shared. “I just didn’t see it being worth the risk, ripping that Band-Aid off again, something that had happened so long ago and why would we rehash it?”
Bobby added, “We survived it once, but everything that we’ve done, we’ve done as a family. So, whatever my mom is going to go through, I’m going to be here and go through it with her. For better or worse.”
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Food Network SoBe Wine & Food Festival
Canceled: The Paula Deen Story explores Paula’s rise and fall over the years, particularly the aftermath of her 2013 scandal. That year, she was sued for racial and sexual discrimination by a former restaurant employee. Paula admitted to having used the “N-word” in the past during the deposition, resulting in the crumbling of her entertainment empire.
“The reason I was really happy to see this [documentary] happen was because I have no interest in trying to convince you whether I’m a racist or not, because I know who I am and what I am,” Paula told the outlet. “But the truth, the whole truth was very, very important for somebody to be willing to dig and investigate, and Billy was willing to do that.”
Corben, for his part, described the documentary as a “celebrity scandal story” and a “nostalgic archive jaunt through the 2000s and the 2010s.” He continued, “When I got this opportunity [to direct], I was like, well, this is interesting. But I wasn’t convinced until I met Paula with her sons, and then I was like, oh, this is really interesting. This is a story about not just a celebrity scandal, but a family that survived the scandal, and maybe this would be a little more internal and less external than we tend to tell.”
Like Paula, Corben said the documentary’s purpose is “not to change people’s opinions,” but to “allow them or help them develop an informed opinion based on the facts.” He added, “I don’t really care what people think of Paula Deen — all due respect. If they feel that she’s a racist, so be it. But at least they form that opinion based on what happened.”
Canceled: The Paul Deen Story, TBA