Lifetime’s Brittany Murphy biopic The Brittany Murphy Story airs this week — and Murphy’s father is not pleased about the movie, to say the least.
“I am disgusted and outraged that Lifetime decided to produce such a trashy project, defiling the memory of my beautiful, talented daughter, Brittany Murphy,” Angelo Bertolotti told The Examiner. “Frankly, I am amazed at their audacity of calling it ‘a true story,’ without conducting any research or consulting with any members of the family. The Brittany Murphy Story is an affront to everything my daughter was in real life. It’s hideous, unauthorized and completely untrue.”
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He’s not alone in his dislike for the two-hour television movie — the reviews so far have been mostly negative. Bertolotti is particularly upset by Lifetime’s “atrocious” casting of actress Amanda Fuller, who plays Murphy in the movie. He says she looks “absolutely nothing like her,” adding, “Everyone looks ridiculous in their bad wigs and the dialogue is nauseating.”
After calling Fuller out online, he’s gone on to retweet various insults, including calling her a “floozy” and implying she got the role through sexual favors. Fuller has blocked Bertolotti on Twitter in response. She called the biopic a “tribute” and said the independent movie purchased by Lifetime was filmed over 16 days on a tight budget.
“It is what it is,” she said in an interview with The TV Page. “All of our hearts were in the right place. I had two days to prepare.”
“When it comes to the dad, as far as I know — which is based off of extensive research — he wasn’t really a part of her life at all,” added Fuller. “He was in jail when she was young and then she tried to have a relationship with him to no avail. It wasn’t until she died that he became so vocal in caring so much about his daughter.”
Bertolotti says these allegations are “absolutely despicable” and that he has always been a part of Murphy’s and her mother’s lives — though his claims have been regularly dismissed by none other than Murphy’s mother herself.
Tribute or not, the film will air at 8 p.m. on Sept. 6.
Sept. 3, 4:58 p.m. Updated with a link to Sharon Murphy’s letter disputing Bertolotti’s claims.
