The new Hulu documentary “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” dives into the actress and model’s controversial career and her years as the “It” girl of the ’80s — including the allegation that she was raped by a Hollywood executive 30 years ago.
“She really wanted an outside perspective on her life, and nothing was off limits,” director Lana Wilson 39, told The Post.
“She only voiced one concern, and that was basically, ‘I hope that I am a multi-dimensional person in this film.’ She had this experience of being reduced to only one thing.”
Wilson said she started the process by diving into an “insane treasure trove” of archive material given to her by Shields, 57.
“It was stuff her mom had collected for over 40 years — thousands of photographs and video clips,” she said.
“At the same time, I was getting to better-know Brooke while interviewing her and people close to her. What I saw was this journey she went on from being an object and a person who didn’t voice her opinions, to a human being who had opinions — and agency and control over her own life. I thought, ‘Okay, the film should be centered on this.’”
Now streaming, the two-part documentary includes archival footage of Shields appearing on various talk shows with her later mother and manager, Teri Shields, throughout her childhood, as well as present-day interviews with Shields and longtime friends including Laura Linney and Drew Barrymore.
They talk candidly about Teri’s alcoholism and how that impacted Shields, and the various controversies around Shields’ onscreen roles — such as playing a child prostitute when she was 11 years old in the 1978 film “Pretty Baby” and her role in the salacious 1980 film “The Blue Lagoon.”
News clips from the era contextualize the cultural reactions at the time, with pundits hand-wringing about Teri letting her then-underaged daughter take on sexualized roles.
Shields herself also reflects on being sexualized as a child.
The documentary also covers Shields’ time at Princeton; she discusses losing her virginity to then-boyfriend Dean Cain, her short-lived marriage to tennis star Andre Agassi, her postpartum depression and her current life with her husband — director/ producer/ screenwriter Chris Henchy, 59 — and their two teen daughters.
Shields also alleges that she was raped by a powerful Hollywood executive when she was in her 20s, and discusses that experience.
Wilson, who also directed the 2020 Taylor Swift documentary “Miss Americana,” said that she didn’t press Shields to name her alleged rapist.
“She didn’t want to name him, and I think that’s her decision,” she said.
“It’s something that she mentioned in our very first meeting. She said, ‘One thing I’ve never talked about is this experience of sexual assault. I think I am ready to share that. But I don’t know if it belongs in the documentary, what do you think?’” said Wilson.
Wilson said that she didn’t want to include it, “just for the sake of a news item.” She decided to interview Shields on-camera about it, and then see if she thought it belonged in “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.”
“I had a feeling that it would end up in the film, because I thought Brooke talks about it in a remarkable way,” said Wilson.
“She’s really living inside the gray area of this experience. She’s still processing a lot of the self-blame that she felt, and has wrestled with in the decades since this happened,” she said. “I think it’s a real gift for a lot of people — especially survivors — to hear that experience echoed … Because it’s so common to blame yourself. It didn’t feel like the biggest moment in the film, but it felt like an essential part of her story.
“I had creative control [over the documentary], but the one exception was that I told her, ‘I won’t include the sexual assault story unless you feel completely comfortable with it.’ So, I showed it to her before we locked, to make sure she was comfortable with it. And she was.”
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