Original-Cin Q&A: Elizabeth Taylor Documentarians Discuss their “Rebel Superstar"
By Bonnie Laufer
Elizabeth Taylor was more than a movie star — she was a phenomenon who lived loudly, loved fiercely, and challenged the rules of fame long before it was fashionable. The new docuseries Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar dismantles layers of Hollywood mythmaking to reveal a woman who wielded her celebrity as power, activism, and defiance.
Bonnie Laufer spoke with directors James House and Caroline Sciama about reintroducing Taylor to a new generation and reframing her legacy as one of radical influence, resilience, and rebellion. The first part of the three-part series of Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar premieres on demand and on Hollywood Suite December 26 at 9 pm, repeating December 27 at 2 am and 2:10 pm. Visit Hollywood Suite for more info.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Much has been documented about Elizabeth Taylor over the years. Why do you think that people can’t get enough of her and why was now the right time to release this docuseries?
JAMES HOUSE: The thing that really drew me toward Elizabeth Taylor is her potential to have always been so entertaining. She gives you so much. She's so beautiful and she's so funny. Yet at the same time, I think through talking about her life, there was still so much to discover and uncover. You can feel like you recognize the world that she lived in. There's a very sweet spot and there are people around who knew her and loved her that I knew we could ask to help tell a story that we did not necessarily know. The thing for me is the combination between funny and meaningful. It was amazing to be able to see that through her testimony that we had on tapes and through the way that people talk about her. It was quite easy for people to be entertained but also emotional when speaking about her.
O-C: There's so much material on Elizabeth Taylor, from when she was a young girl until the day she died. Where did you even start?
CAROLINE SCIAMA: You look at it, take a big breath and say ‘OK, let's do this.’ We broke it down chunk by chunk. We had, obviously, the amazing archives of her films which we grappled with how best to use them. We did some interesting things in terms of using them in a more interpretive way, where we didn't necessarily have home footage. What was interesting about Elizabeth was that she was intensely private. She had a public persona, but she closed that family door, and it was family time. So, there wasn't a huge amount of home video. But we did have this brilliant stretch of interviews all the way through her life.
The way that Elizabeth's tone and identity shifted as she got older was there for all to see. And then an exciting batch of archives that we found was these unheard audio tapes that she'd made with a few different journalists over the years. That was suddenly ‘Wow, we've now got Elizabeth unfiltered,’ and that was a whole different layer. Like James said, she was riotously funny, hackled so lo
O-C: Speaking of private people, her son Chris Wilding had never given an interview before, but you were able to talk to him on camera for this series. How did you gain his trust?
JH: It felt important to have the family at least on board or knowing what we're doing. This is a story about their mother, who has been splashed across the papers and TV in so many ways over the years. They don't really have a say over what is said about her, so we really wanted to do the right thing from a caring perspective. With Chris, as you say he was very private, and didn't necessarily do interviews, but we built a relationship over time. We had a weekly session, and I just wanted to know about his mum, and we got to know each other and had lovely, fun chats. Sometimes we spoke about Elizabeth, sometimes we spoke about life. We just kind of chatted and got to know each other over time. Then it got to a moment where he felt that he did want to contribute because he understood the project and the benefit of him being in it.
CS: James did a brilliant job interviewing him and making him feel comfortable. We took our time and it was on Chris's terms, and it was a valuable relationship that we still value to this day. That goes for the whole family. We're so grateful to them. The best experiences that you have I think are where you feel like you're really collaborating with people. We built that relationship with Chris and then we showed him the series at the end, and we were quite nervous about it. We sat there on a Zoom call, and he said he came away with a newfound respect for his mother, who he said was kick-ass and it made us emotional. I think all of us on that call felt really moved by that.
O-C: This docuseries is executive produced by Kim Kardashian who is no stranger to receiving constant attention. How do you think Elizabeth Taylor would have handled herself had there been social media in her time?
CS: It's an interesting question as to whether she would have even engaged in it. I guess she would have had to. There’s no doubt that she would have been famous on social media. I don't know how she would have dealt with it, though. I think she would have been out there. I think she would have spoken her mind. I think she would have used it to her benefit.
JH: I don't think she would have shied away. I think what Elizabeth was brilliant at, especially in later life, was utilizing any platform that she had and knowing her strength and knowing her fame and using it to her advantage. She would have been able to convert that into ‘Now I've got your attention, listen to me.’ She would literally go up to people at galas and not leave them alone until they handed over $10,000 toward the charities she supported. I think she would have used it and probably been incredibly successful on it especially for the fact she was such a philanthropist and stood strong on helping wherever she could.
O-C: After going through all the footage and really getting to know Elizabeth, was there anything that surprised, shocked or impressed you about her?
JH: Yes, many. There are dramatic near-death experiences in the series, and then some not in the series. You are spoiled for choice of things that shock and surprise you. I suppose one of the journeys for me is between when she felt like Chris, her son, says in the series, she didn't try to change things. She just lived her life her way. But in some ways, I feel like that's one stage of her life. She went from surviving in the studio system in the 1940s and 50s, where she was treated badly by much older studio execs to exerting her own agency through a period of time where it feels for a while she just goes bananas, and it's wonderful to watch.
She's living her life how she wants and she's loving who she wants. She is in the public eye, but she appears not to really care that some people in the world, many people in the world, are judging her decisions. She becomes much more intentional in what she does later in her life, especially when it comes to advocating for causes close to her heart. And so I suppose it was surprising and moving and wonderful to see how she, as Caroline says, used her fame in a laser-sharp way later on, and the way that she did that was a revelation.
O-C: We all know that Elizabeth Taylor was married seven times, twice to Richard Burton. But Mike Todd felt like the love of her life but died tragically in a plane crash. Had he lived maybe there would never have been a Richard Burton affair.
CS: It's interesting looking at Elizabeth's life, there's so many different ways you can split it into parts. One of them is by men, but it is quite fascinating to sort of look at the different stages that she went through. I think Mike Todd, for me, represents the first time that she felt freedom. In some ways, she broke up the shackles of the studio system and of an abusive relationship and breaking away from Nikki Hilton, her first marriage at 18. That was huge in those days. She was so young, and no one did that. No one divorced a Hilton or really anyone for that matter. Even her mother told her to work it out.
I think when you look at the footage of her and Mike Todd, it feels like some of the purest young love that you could see and that she got to be loved as a woman, but also as a child in some ways. She hadn't had that before because she started acting at such a young age and her mother wasn’t around much. She was looked after by him and able to be comfortable in his presence. So, I think it was the most passionate loving relationship, but I think with Burton she got that spark and the electricity.
They truly were passionate, the ways that were not always in a good way, but I think she met her match in intelligence and in a way the frenetic-ness of their relationship. I think she quite liked the chaos of it as well. You know, having someone that she could match with and shout at and have these horrendously passionate arguments and then make up with in that way as well.
I think she had two very different sorts of true loves: a softer loving one and a fierce one born out of desire and passion.
James, you interviewed many people for this series, but was there any living person you wanted to interview and couldn’t get?
JH: There are so many amazing, famous people whose lives intersected with Elizabeth Taylor. Later in life, she even had a friendship with Colin Farrell. It would have been great to be able to talk to him. It would have been great to be able to talk to Shirley MacLaine, for example, who knew Mike Todd and Elizabeth in the 1950s and has stories about, after Mike Todd died, which I know is a spoiler for some, she apparently said that Elizabeth was there with a glass of some sort of booze, raging at the world.
We did talk to Margaret O'Brien, who knew her as a fellow child actor. We talked to Joan Collins, who was there in the early 50s. And Dr Anthony Fauci. You are speaking to these sort of super, super kind of Hollywood stars and one of the most intelligent medical minds that you know, sort of they weren't going on HIV-AIDS, and that was fascinating as well, sort of seeing that aspect of her life with him. The respect that he and the medical community had for Elizabeth was as high as the Hollywood community. It was really impressive.