When Megan Pete started rapping and establishing her public persona, “Megan Thee Stallion,” celebrity status was a tool to get her music to wider audiences. However, the expectation of “good” behavior from women in the public eye saw the same status become a stifling limitation in the wake of betrayal, domestic violence and losing loved ones.
Directed by Emmy award-winning director and producer Nneka Onuorah and released on October 31, 2024 via Amazon Prime Video, “Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words” places viewers up close to the controversy and abuse Megan endured at the hands of fellow musician Tory Lanez, the media and the general public.
Documenting the fallout
According to Megan, participating in a documentary wasn’t something she was thrilled to do. However, her sentiments changed as she saw how she was being discussed in the media and online. “I started to watch a lot of people dehumanize me, and a lot of people were trying to take control of my narrative and tell my story, so that’s why I even agreed to do the documentary in the first place,” she said at the Los Angeles premiere.
During their speeches, Onuorah and Megan jokingly commented about how often she demanded to be left alone and that the camera crew gave her space. For this reason, Onuorah was both the director and the primary camera operator. During sit-down interview moments, the use of extreme close ups brings viewers closer to Megan, literally and figuratively. Megan discussed details around how she felt and clearly emoted her feelings in 4K footage.
Recreating memory with animation
To reiterate, Megan was reluctant to film this project, but her desire to set the record straight was central to her participation. Often when footage of an event is unavailable, documentary filmmakers generally have to rely on their subjects’ memory to communicate a story. Through the use of animation, Onuorah didn’t suffer this limitation.
In the wake of keeping up with whichever celebrity, reality TV is commonplace across TV programming. Where one might expect archive footage in the vein of childhood videos, Onuorah directed moments like these with animated scenes. While seeing hospital footage isn’t surprising in reality television, for Megan Thee Stallion’s family, filming in the hospital after her mother suffered a brain injury was kept off camera and later depicted in the documentary using animated visuals.
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The “Hiss” rapper has been vocal about her love of anime since she began her career; yet the misogynoir she faces for participating in this genre of art has resulted in onlookers leaving comments across social media suggesting she’s faking her interest to capitalize off the genre’s popularity. Given the attempts to discredit her interest in the genre as disingenuous, the use of anime in her first documentary is an impactful use of filmmaking to reassert her sense of self and creative expression.
Megan and the media
Likely one of the most motivating forces for Megan to pursue this documentary was to dispel the idea that her sexual experiences and relationships were integral to maintaining Tory Lanez’ innocence or establishing his guilt. She was subjected to dehumanization because of her sexuality and, let’s be honest, her womanhood. The documentary addressed these two allegations head on.
For instance, in her first public interview about the shooting, Megan sat down with CBS Mornings host Gayle King. During the sit-down, Megan described events leading up to being in the car with Tory Lanez and her now ex-friend, Kelsey Harris, then going into detail about how she was shot and why she initially denied being shot to the police.
Gayle asked whether or not Megan and Tory shared an “intimate” relationship. When Megan clarified if the host meant a sexual relationship, she denied ever having sex with Tory Lanez. During the trial, however, Megan admitted to having sex with him at one point during their friendship.
The documentary shed light on how floored she was at Gayle King asking about her sexual activity. “Yes, bitch. I lied to Gayle King, bitch. First of all, I ain’t know that bitch was even finna ask me about that shit. I thought we was gonna talk about this shooting,” she said after the interview.
Journalistically, one could perceive the question about Megan Thee Stallion’s sexual relationship with Tory Lanez as relevant. While that may be true, questioning the survivor of a shooting about whether or not she had sex with her assailant in the past only further fed into the public’s hyperfixation on Megan’s perceived sexual deviance.
While this was her only interview on the matter before the trial, that did not quell the deluge of media coverage around the shooting. Popular blogs, podcasts and social media accounts were “part of a new wave of infotainment, where content creators cover consequential events without the expectation of adhering to journalistic standards,” according to NBC reporters, Kat Tenbarge and Char Adams.
When considering that everyone’s right to free speech is unimpeachable, it is important to note that the continued production of infotainment content that suggested Megan Thee Stallion was lying about the shooting, or that Tory Lanez was being set up by some kind of third force, had a damaging effect on her psyche — on top of being factually inaccurate.
“Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words” chronicled the shift in Megan Pete’s identity from a daughter to an orphan, and a friend to victim to survivor, freeing her from the confines and silencing nature of being a “cookie cutter” celebrity. Through establishing her own narrative to the public, documentary filmmaking has re-centered Megan’s story above the assertions of denialists, unscrupulous infotainment content creators and Tory Lanez.