Aretha Franklin’s Family Denounces New Biopic

Responding to National Geographic’s third season of its Genius anthology drama television series following the life of Aretha Franklin, the late soul singer’s family have said they do not support the biopic.

The first season of Genius followed the life of Albert Einstein, the second Pablo Picasso, and the third Aretha Franklin - who is played by Cynthia Erivo.

Franklin’s granddaughter, Grace took to TikTok to share her thoughts on the matter:

“As the immediate family, we feel that it’s important to be involved with any biopic of my grandma’s life, as it’s hard to get any accurate depiction of anyone’s life without speaking to the ones closest to them,” she said.

“During the process of writing, directing, and filming this movie, we’ve reached out to Genius as a family on multiple occasions where we have been disrespected and told that we will not be worked with. As the immediate family — emphasis on immediate — we do not support this film and we ask that you also do not support this film, as we feel extremely disrespected, and we feel there will be many inaccuracies about my grandmother’s life.”

On another occasion, Franklin’s son spoke to Rolling Stone about Genius, who said any communication between the family and National Geographic ended when his cousin Sabrina Garrett-Owens stepped down as the representative of Franklin’s personal estate.

“We had our lawyers reach out to them and see if we could have some type of input and see the film and say what we like and what we didn’t like about it. And the report that we got back was saying that it was too late, production had already wrapped up and that they didn’t want to work with us. It was basically too late.

“This is about common, decent respect for our family,” he said. “If I was to do a movie on your family, I would try and speak with you, your sons, daughters, grandchildren and people like that. And we just never felt like we got a shot to speak to them freely from my heart about our family member.”

A spokesperson for National Geographic said in a statement that both parties had the same goal: “to honour and celebrate the life and legacy of Aretha Franklin”.

“We worked with many people who knew Ms. Franklin — from Clive Davis to members of her family’s estate — to make sure we told her story in an honest and authentic way.”