Tell Them You Love Me rose from the film festival circuit and contained acclaim from Sky in the UK, launching to international notoriety when it was added to Netflix on June 14. The documentary film dominated the streaming service for nearly two weeks, and became the subject of countless water cooler conversations, to the extent that they still exist in our culture. The film by Nick August-Perna focuses on the controversial case of Anna Stubblefield, a Rutgers professor specializing in disability and facilitated communication, and who her court once considered to be her victim, Derrick Johnson, a disabled non-verbal man with whom she began an affair.
Questions soon surfaced regarding the nature of that relationship and whether it could actually be consensual given Johnson’s disability. The result is a tense, ethically ambiguous, and often mind-bending documentary. It’s both a character study of interesting people in an exceptionally difficult situation, and also an interrogation of our notions of consent, power, disability, and sex.
Tell Them You Love Me is produced by Mindhouse, an independent production company created by filmmakers Louis Theroux, Arron Fellows, Nancy Strang, and Sophie Ardern. Theroux himself has become one of the most significant documentarians of our time, and took a moment to respond to MovieWeb’s questions about the nature of the film, its production, and a similarly themed project he’d like to pursue.
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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
MovieWeb: Did you provide any mentorship or advice to Nick as he made the film, and what was the nature of that?
Louis Theroux: Nick didn’t need any advice from me, definitely not artistically, so I viewed my job as making sure he felt supported and knowing I had his back editorially. The main thing I felt I could offer was having a profile — I’d like to think my getting behind the project helped to get it commissioned and made. And also, there were times when we encountered nervousness and even resistance among industry people — festival programmers, for example — because the themes of the film are so shocking. And I was able to say, this is normal, though disappointing, and I’ve been here before, and it’s no reflection on the quality of the film.
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Tell Them You Love Me ‘Doesn’t Fit Squarely Into a Single Box’
MovieWeb:Tell Them You Love Me is a great tragedy about power and consent. While there is a legal crime, you end up feeling sympathy and sorrow for everyone involved. Do you consider Anna Stubblefield to be a rapist, or are things not as simplistic as that?
Louis Theroux: I don’t approach the story in those terms – which isn’t to say she is or she isn’t. She’s been convicted of a crime but that is only part of a story that has far more layers than that. Sorry, I’m not trying to dodge the question. I’m also not sure whether the term “tragedy” quite fits. I guess one of the strengths of the film is that it doesn’t fit squarely into a single box — true crime, disability story, tragedy, psychological profile, science story. It’s all those things.
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Tell Them You Love Me Director Nick August-Perna Explains How He Made the Film & Its Complex Ethics
The filmmaker discusses the years that went into filming Tell Them You Love Me with the Johnsons and Anna Stubblefield.
MovieWeb:Tell Them You Love Me quickly became one of the top two or three most-watched films on Netflix when it came to the streaming platform on June 14. A few days later, Fifty Shades of Grey came to the streaming service, and the two films dominated the first and second spot on Netflix for days. They are so utterly different, but they’re both films about communication (contracts), consent, and sex. I’m curious, after making this movie, what you think about how Hollywood portrays consent, not just in Fifty Shades of Grey but in general.
Louis Theroux: That’s true and that’s a great point. I haven’t seen 50 Shades but another great case in point is Baby Reindeer, whose great strength was that it showed sexual assault and invasive behaviour in all its real-life messiness. Hollywood in general has been guilty of oversimplifying how sexual assault takes place. Consent is often not clear-cut. That, for me, was the power of Baby Reindeer. Its depiction of the murkiness of how assault can happen, apparent “complicity,” though I use that term very guardedly, because it’s not actual complicity. And TTYLM has the same subtlety and also clarity, in my view.
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Louis Theroux on His Interview Style and a Judge Rotenberg Center Project
MovieWeb: I consider you one of the greatest interviewers of all time, and I’m not alone in that opinion. What do you think separates your style of interview / ‘filmed communication’ from others like Piers Morgan, etc.? And what advice would you have for conducting good interviews (regardless of context)?
Louis Theroux: Oh wow, that’s very kind and I appreciate the compliment. But there are so many different kinds of interview, depending on setting, length, tone, and so on. For me, though, it’s about listening and being curious. That’s the main thing. Showing the right amount of yourself is also part of it. Being present and relatable and giving enough, but not too much.
MovieWeb: Is there any project you’ve worked on, on and off for years, that has never come together, yet which you’d like to finish?
Louis Theroux: There are a few. On the [theme] of disability, many years ago I heard about a school called the Judge Rotenberg [Center], or something similar, for kids who are, in different ways, neurodivergent. Some of the kids are prone to dangerous behaviours, including self-harm. Part of the school regimen involves them wearing a backpack which administers an electric shock, to discourage the behaviours. We were in discussions about filming a documentary there, but so far it’s come to nothing.
Tell Them You Love Me is currently streaming on Netflix through the link below (and available to rent on Apple TV), and can be streamed through Sky TV.
