Within the new Whitney Houson biopic I Wanna Dance with Anyone, Houston’s mom has police escort her daughter from her dwelling (in entrance of her younger daughter, Bobbi Kristina) after discovering Houston in a drug-fueled stupor following her father’s loss of life. We subsequent see Houston in tranquil restoration at a rehab middle, and later, a recreation of her emotional comeback efficiency on The Oprah Winfrey Present in 2009. The movie excises a lot of the 2000s from Houston’s story, together with her starring position in 2005’s disturbing actuality sequence Being Bobby Brown.
The eleven-episode saga adopted Brown, Houston, their daughter Bobbi Kristina, her half-siblings La’Princia and Bobby Jr., Brown’s brother Tommy and his father Herbert. However the married couple had been the principle draw of a present that chronicled Houston’s mood, Bobby’s brashness, and an general sense that the pair — Houston particularly — had been unwell. “Behind the scenes, Houston had been utilizing once more,” Self-importance Honest reported.
But, the present was largely acquired with mockery and contempt reasonably than care and concern. An early hit for Bravo, now well-known for its Actual Housewives franchise, Being Bobby Brown was reportedly the community’s highest-rated present on the time. Its callousness is what makes I Wanna Dance with Anyone really feel mandatory – it’s a loving embrace of Houston after years of media exploitation fueled by condescension and sensationalism.
The sequence allowed its producers and titular star to capitalize on Houston’s misery and the dysfunction of her marriage. Earlier than the present’s premiere, Brown admitted that it was all in service of his picture. “Every day, I’m attempting to show my level, that I’m extra good than I’m unhealthy,” he instructed The New York Occasions.
In doing so, he thought the world would see how difficult Houston may very well be. “Bob’s massive factor was everybody blamed him for her downfall, however when he met her she was already utilizing medication,” Karrine Steffans instructed Self-importance Honest.
Steffans is an writer and former music video mannequin who was Brown’s lover within the 2000s throughout his marriage to Whitney. “He at all times felt very indignant about that. He instructed me, ‘What everyone noticed wasn’t the true Whitney.’ He at all times mentioned her non-public persona — which you noticed on Being Bobby Brown — was who she actually was.” However reasonably than valorize Brown, the present demeaned each of them. “Not solely does it reveal Brown to be much more vulgar than the tabloids recommend, but it surely manages on the similar time to rob Houston of any final shreds of dignity,” wrote one critic in The Hollywood Reporter.
One of many present’s govt producers, Tracey Baker-Simmons, claimed she needed to inform the story of Brown and Houston past the headlines. “Exterior of all of the damaging blurbs, we needed to know what else is there to those individuals,” she mentioned.
Brown allowed 24/7 entry to himself and his household, however the consequence fed the prevailing narrative reasonably than challenged it. Marc Hoeferlin, editor of the documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me, which employed outtakes from Being Bobby Brown, hinted that it didn’t must be that method. “That present itself comes throughout as that prepare wreck of a present,” he instructed Jezebel. “It wasn’t shot like that. It was shot very well and observationally and I don’t know if that was the intention to try this sort of actuality TV factor.”
For Bravo, although, the humbling-bordering-on-humiliation of the once-adored stars gave the impression to be the purpose. Lauren Zalaznick, Bravo’s president on the time, reportedly greenlit the sequence in quarter-hour. “It was very obvious to me that this was one thing proper for Bravo,” she mentioned. “That is very tactile. You are feeling one thing if you watch this present.” Zalaznick had been on a mission to bolster “middlebrow” tv, claiming that the “channel actually grew to become the fullest expression of high-low tradition.” She described a present like High Chef as aspirational, whereas Actual Housewives — the place, amongst different issues, wealthy ladies bicker and betray one another — may very well be watched by audiences with a way of ethical superiority. Being Bobby Brown simply match into that field as effectively.
In 2009, Houston instructed Oprah she agreed to be on the present to assuage Brown’s jealousy of her energy and profile, and rebuke the world’s disdain for his or her marriage. So, she performed down her success and performed up her wifehood.
“I used to be attempting to make a press release, like, ‘You guys aren’t gonna win,’” Houston mentioned. “‘You’re not going to try this. We bought married. We had been in love. We had been loopy for one another. We needed to have a household. I’m simply not going to allow you to try this to us. I’m simply not.’” Nevertheless, she admitted the combat was futile: “One way or the other it bought actually sort of messy and bought misplaced up in there. After which we began doing different issues that entered into the wedding that you just simply can’t come out straight if you’ve bought loads of exterior stuff occurring.”
Seven years after Being Bobby Brown aired, Brown admitted that watching it revealed the way in which medication had impacted them as a pair. “We was in a position to see that our drug use had affected our relationship, had affected the love that we felt for one another,” he mentioned.
Slightly than parading Houston’s behavioral and habit points, I Wanna Dance with Anyone situates her drug use in her ache. We first see her smoke a bong along with her brothers to flee a vicious combat between her mother and father. Later, we see her pull out paraphernalia after jetting dwelling to her husband solely to seek out that he’s not there — and, assumedly, with one other girl. On this method, the film’s portrayal of Houston is mild — she will be able to nonetheless be daring or harsh, however the movie holds her with empathy and tenderness.
Some critics of the movie have condemned it as too valuable with Houston’s drug abuse. “I sense this kind of must respect the story, however then on the finish of the day, [the biopic] felt to me a bit bit like an overcorrection… in that, like, it simply didn’t actually delve too deeply into that,” mentioned NPR’s Aisha Harris. The media’s careless therapy of Houston, epitomized by Being Bobby Brown, is exactly why it didn’t.
Whitney Houston and husband Bobby Brown attend the VH1 Divas Duets post-concert occasion on the MGM Grand Backyard Area on Could 22, 2003, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Photographs
The present solely lasted one season. Houston refused to seem in a second, so it didn’t get picked up once more, although Brown reportedly hoped it might. A 12 months after the present concluded, Houston served Brown with divorce papers. The 2004 filming interval grew to become a turning level. In the course of the taping of Being Bobby Brown, Brown was jailed for a couple of month after a number of probation violations stemming from a 1996 DUI cost. One of many violations was allegedly hanging Houston within the face so laborious her cheek bruised and inner-lip was reduce.
Whereas Brown was behind bars, his sister Tina lived with Houston as she was within the throes of her drug use, and bought scary tales of her habit to the Nationwide Enquirer, which they revealed in March 2006 (together with the photograph Pusha T and Kanye West finally — and insensitively — used because the album cowl for 2018’s Daytona). By 2007, Houston’s divorce from Brown was finalized.
In more moderen years, Brown has expressed remorse for the present — particularly, for pulling his daughter Bobbi Kristina, who died in 2015 below comparable circumstances as her mom, into it. Reflecting on Houston’s notorious Diane Sawyer interview the place she declared that “crack is whack,” he additionally admitted, “There was no cause for [Houston] to be on tv, at the moment.”
