Aretha Franklin‘s family has made it clear they did not want a new biopic about the beloved Queen of Soul to see the light of day.
The family did not support the much-hyped Genius: Aretha series, which debuted on National Geographic on Sunday evening, March 21.
Cynthia Erivo, pictured with Aretha in 2015, earned critical praise for her role as the Queen of Soul in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks‘ new eight-part project, but Aretha’s granddaughter said it’s full of fiction.
“This movie has to go,” she said in a new TikTok video. “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 the family has “been disrespected and told 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.”
Her father and Aretha’s son, Kecalf Franklin, supported his daughter, telling Rolling Stone, “What we’ve found out in the past is that usually when people don’t want to work with you, that is a prelude to some type of unprofessional behavior or a prelude to some type of untruth or slander… That’s usually the case when people say that they don’t want to work with you.”
Genius: Aretha chronicles the soul legend’s rise to the top from her roots as a teenage single teenage mom in Alabama.
National Geographic bosses acknowledged they made no contact with Franklin’s family while making the series, but they still insist the biopic was thoroughly researched.
The Franklin family is working with the producers of Respect, the new Aretha Franklin biopic starring Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, which is slated to hit theaters this summer.
