Summary
-
Tell Them You Love Me
is a Sky documentary that became a huge hit on Netflix, and explores the legally precarious issue of consent between a professor and a disabled man. - Nick August-Perna spent two years building trust to film a story first discovered in a New York Times Magazine article.
- The documentary captivated audiences with its fascinating and ethically complex narrative.
Tell Them You Love Me is a documentary film originally made for Sky in the UK by filmmaker Nick August-Perna, but it wasn’t until its arrival on Netflix that the movie became a watercooler event. Debuting June 14, 2024, the film quickly shot up to the top 10 most-watched movies on Netflix, remaining in the first or second spot for more than 10 days. The ethically complex documentary explores the issue of consent between Rutgers professor Anna Stubblefield and the man she falls in love with, Derrick Johnson, who also happens to be disabled and intellectually unable to consent to sexual relations.
“It’s so complicated and amazing, the story’s just endlessly fascinating,” August-Perna told MovieWeb in an exclusive interview. “And it stayed that way for me through the final days of the edit, just always unlocking new questions and new things that I was discovering.” Audiences have been doing the same. But how did it all come about to begin with? The director explains below.
Tell Them You Love Me
4/5
A documentary about an academic and professor who specializes in disability and facilitated communication who falls in love with a severely disabled man, and the legal trouble that follows.
- Release Date
- June 14, 2024
- Director
- Nick August-Perna
- Cast
- Kate Dulcich , Jerron Herman , Brenda McCullough , Richard Rampolla , Julian Thomas
“There was an article which I have to pay tribute to, which is beautifully written in New York Times Magazine, 2015, which is now recirculating, and by a wonderful writer, Dan Engber. And I read it, and I knew some people in the disability space as well who had been forwarding me things about the case, so it was kind of on my radar. But the article captured the layers in a way that the others hadn’t.”
I was completely transfixed and overcome with just a very rare feeling where you sort of say, ‘I just have to make this.’ I don’t think I ever experienced it to that degree before. And I didn’t even really think about what I was doing, I immediately just started reaching out.
“I wrote to Anna [Stubblefield], she was still in the county jail. She was awaiting sentencing. She’d been convicted, she was facing up to 40 years in prison at the time, and was not accessible by email,” continued August-Perna. “So her mother kind of brought us together and gave me the address, and sort of gave me her blessing. I wrote, and I got to shoot the sentencing hearing. So that was, strangely, kind of the ending of the film, but it was the first thing I ever shot on this documentary. [Anna] went to prison, and so, over the next two years, I visited her.”
Related
The True Story Behind Tell Them You Love Me on Netflix: Where Is Anna Stubblefield Today?
Netflix’s latest documentary centers on the complicated relationship between Derrick Johnson and Anna Stubblefield. Where are the parties today?
Getting Transparent with Anna Stubblefield and the Johnsons
From the outset, Nick August-Perna made sure that the subjects of Tell Them You Love Me knew what the film would be. “I was very transparent right away,” explained the filmmaker. “I said this would be a 360 degree story that I wasn’t coming in to sort of take a side and hit a home run for anybody. I really wanted to bring the kind of curiosity that I had and that the audience would have.”
Watch Our Extended Interview with Director Nick August-Perna Below:
“I had already reached out to the Johnsons,” continued August-Perna, “and they expressed openness to talking and meeting. I met with them, first in public, you know, at restaurants, and then at their house. And it was a few years before I ever brought a camera along for anybody. So it was during that period that I was able to kind of really dive into all the research and get myself up to speed on how I was going to tackle this thing.”
I spent at least two years just trust building and not bringing any camera to the table.
And it paid off. After nearly six years of trust-building, filming, editing, and hitting film festivals, Tell Them You Love Me became not just a Netflix hit but one of the most talked-about movies of the year. You can watch it through the link below:
Watch on Netflix
