A producer who collaborated with Farrah Fawcett on Farrah's Story, a documentary of the 62-year-old star's battle with cancer set to air on NBC this Friday, filed a lawsuit against Ryan O'Neal and others, seeking to regain creative control of the project and asking for unspecified damages.
In an exclusive, in-depth interview with Gold Derby,producer Craig Nevius speaks Farrah Fawcett wanted the program to be presented in a diary format — not in the traditional documentary mode with talking heads, as was used — emphasizing urgent medical and legal issues that got downplayed in the final telecast.
According to the Associated Press, producer Craig Nevius does not name Fawcett as a defendant in the suit or ask that the show be blocked from airing, but it does claim that Fawcett's longtime companion, O'Neal, his business manager, and Fawcett's friend Alana Stewart interfered with his role as producer, and that O'Neal physically threatened him.
Craig Nevius says Fawcett refused to permit her son to be seen in her reality series "Chasing Farrah" on TV Land in 2005, which he also produced. Redmond's battle with drugs was becoming public back then. producer Nevius says. "She didn't want a permanent record on film that would follow him throughout his later life."
When NBC granted their request, Nevius was surprised because Fawcett had already planned what should happen if she became too ill to continue to oversee the TV special. "She had foreseen this possibility and assigned creative control to me," he says. "Last April she signed an agreement empowering me to make the creative decisions." "Farrah's Story," originally titled "Wing and a Prayer," was produced by Fawcett's and Nevius' company.
