Aretha Franklin’s Family Denounces NatGeo’s ‘Genius’: It’s About ‘Common, Decent Respect’
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/03/aretha-franklin-family-natgeo-genius-series-1234625132/
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Kecalf Franklin alleged that the producers on the NatGeo didn’t ultimately want his family’s input on the series, which went into production in 2019.
“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, so we’re not quite sure where we’re going to see in this series,” he said, confirming he’s never see any of the limited series and doesn’t intent to watch it. “That’s usually the case when people say that they don’t want to work with you.”
Kecalf said communication between the network and his family stopped after his cousin, Sabrina Garrett-Owens, resigned her post as representative of Aretha’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,” he said. “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.”