New trailer for Miss Cleo’s documentary hints at ‘web of stories’ surrounding her life

HBO Max released the first trailer for an upcoming documentary on Thursday about Miss Cleo, the ’90s television psychic known for the popular catchphrase “Call me now!”

The teaser for “Call Me Miss Cleo,” which premiered on the streaming service on December 15, shows various cast members reflecting on the life of the tarot reader, whose legal name was Youree Dell Harris.

“Who is the real Miss Cleo?” The web of stories, it seems, is very broad,” one person said.

“Cleo may have been a character to deal with whatever was going on in her life, but it was still very real to her,” said another.

Also featured in the video is actress Debra Wilson, who parodied Miss Cleo on the ‘Mad TV’ comedy series in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“Don’t be fooled into thinking what you know is the whole story,” Wilson tells the camera.

The new documentary tackles some of the major controversies surrounding Harris, who featured famous pay-per-view services on TV commercials with a fake Jamaican accent.

Among them is a 2002 federal lawsuit that was filed against Psychic Readers Network, the hotline company she promoted. The Federal Trade Commission finally announced that Psychic Readers Network and Access Resource Services, the company behind the hotline, had agreed to waive approximately $500 million in unpaid consumer charges and pay a $5 million fine. dollars.

Harris died in 2016 following a battle with cancer. She was 53 years old.

Senain Kheshgi, the director of “Call Me Miss Cleo,” told Deadline in a statement earlier this year that Harris “may have been an accomplice or perhaps a victim in the… [Psychic Readers Network] fraud, but she also had talent and personality, which for women doesn’t always translate into access or wealth.

“Her story is an example of how brown and black women have historically been marginalized and exotified in society and popular culture,” she added.