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Why was Wendy Williams's biopic on Aaliyah controversial? Inside R Kelly love story and why Zendaya backed out

The film — directed by Bradley Walsh and featuring Alexandra Shipp as Aaliyah Dana Haughton — had never been authorized or approved by Aaliyah's family

Wendy Williams has been surrounded by a number of controversies. One of those scandals also included the time when ‘The Wendy Williams Show’ host produced a biopic on Aaliyah in 2014. Titled ‘Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B’, the movie sketched out the life of the early 2000s R&B artist but attracted only negative reactions.

Apparently, the film — directed by Bradley Walsh and featuring Alexandra Shipp as Aaliyah Dana Haughton — had never been authorized or approved by Aaliyah's family. In fact, one review headline read: “Lifetime's Aaliyah Biopic: The Film That Should Never Have Been Made”. 

Did you know the movie had first signed Zendaya in the lead role? A review from The New York Times titled “Resinging the Song of a Life Cut Short” read: “The title role was going to be played by the Disney star Zendaya, but she pulled out of the production in June amid a fan backlash to her casting and her own concerns about the film’s integrity. She was replaced by Alexandra Shipp, whose role here is the definition of thankless.”

Why was Aaliyah's biopic so controversial?

When ‘Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B’ hit the screens, it drew almost 3.2M viewers and was the second-highest-rated television film of 2014 despite negative reviews. However, it soon grabbed headlines and was heavily criticized for its storyline.

The film was said to have romanticized the illegal marriage of the young singer to R Kelly, who was charged with 10 counts of criminal sexual abuse, including child pornography.

But when Wendy was asked to comment on it, she said it told stories without being “distasteful”. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she said, “Lifetime needed to tell this story correctly. Fans won't say, 'Oh, my God, how could you disgrace her memory?' And nosy people like me who want to find out things will also be fine.” Clarifying what kind of things, she stated, “Her upbringing. How did she meet R Kelly? What did her parents say when their 15-year-old baby girl brought home a 28-year-old man? Aaliyah was a take-charge young lady with strong opinions about her career. This movie tells all those stories without being distasteful.”

How the Lifetime biopic was trolled

After the movie was released, fans couldn't stop trolling the movie and hashtags like #LifetimeBiopics and #LifetimeBeLike started floating on social media. In fact, viewers haven't forgotten the biopic until now, and are scared to watch the upcoming movie on Williams' life after that biopic.

One tweet read, “With Wendy Williams' biopic coming out, now is a good time to remind everyone that Wendy was behind an awful Aaliyah Lifetime biopic that mispronounced her name the ENTIRE FILM and romanticized her relationship with groomer and pedophile R Kelly,” and another said, “When you still mad at Wendy Williams for producing that garbage Aaliyah movie.” A third wrote, “I’m afraid to watch it and the Wendy Williams movie because I still have the Lifetime movie on Aaliyah stuck in my head. And it’s not pretty.”