Mr. T displeased with Netflix documentary on his life

"Wow man, I'm more than that."

By Jarrod Jones  |  September 3, 2026 | 1:29pm
Photo: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images
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Mr. T displeased with Netflix documentary on his life

Netflix’s sports documentary series Untold has turned its investigative eye on A-Team and Rocky III star Mr. T with Untold Mr. T: I Pity the Fool, and the outcome has not worked out for all parties involved. In a frank interview with The Guardian meant to promote the doc, Mr. T. let his grievances fly about the film’s angle on the actor and former wrestler’s life, placing the blame for its shortcomings and perceived distortions on its director, Scott Weintrob. “The documentary pissed me off, because they didn’t cover a lot of stuff. When I saw it, I was like: ‘What the heck?’ It’s garbage,” T said to The Guardian‘s Simon Hattenstone. “You build me up, then you try to punk me out. I said: ‘Wow man, I’m more than that.'”

Mr. T takes umbrage at the glossing over of the more positive aspects of his life, including his philanthropic and advocacy work (such as joining Nancy Reagan’s 1982 “Just Say No” campaign), in favor of the more colorful moments in his career, the most obvious of which will presumably be presented when I Pity The Fool hits Netflix on September 8. “Why don’t you show Mr. T working with the Make-A-Wish kids? Why don’t you show Mr. T being in the army? So we show Mr. T tough, and then you show Mr. T as the Bearded Lady,” he says, referring to Alex Winter’s 1993 cult horror-comedy, Freaked. “See, that’s an agenda. It was a hidden agenda; they had to undercut what I’m about. What a joke!”

To pause on the “Bearded Lady” aspect (how often does Freaked come up on a regular news day?), Winter has said that T initially embraced his role as The Bearded Lady, the film’s “Freek Land” sideshow performer, until he suddenly left the production with three days of shooting left. “[He] was really a great sport all the way through the shoot, and about a week before he was done, he just had too much cross-dressing,” the director told IndieWire in 2012. “He’s a pretty macho guy.” At any rate, Mr. T doesn’t care for the documentary’s inclusion of his former agent, Pete Young, who is seen in the documentary criticizing the actor’s participation in Winter’s film. 

“I didn’t have no problem playing Freaked, because we were going against the typecast,” he clarifies. “Brooke Shields was in it, Keanu Reeves was in it, Randy Quaid was in it. It was a fine role, but he’s putting me down for being in it. He wants to cut Mr. T down. The time that it took to put that part [of the documentary] on, you could have had my pastor speaking about the people I changed in the community, but you don’t show that,” to which Hattenstone helpfully notes the film does feature some time with Mr. T’s pastor, Reverend Henry Hardy.

Regardless, T is not happy with Netflix’s finished product, nor its director. “Here’s the bit that really pisses me off,” he continued, as the observing Netflix representative pleaded with Hattenstone to switch topics. “Me and my manager did a conference call with Scott, and he says, ‘What about Peter Young?’ and I said, ‘We had to sue him, so no, nothing to do with him’ […] We told them ‘Don’t put Peter in my doc,’ but he did.” If nothing else, Mr. T has zero pity for promotion decorum!

Untold Mr T: I Pity the Fool premieres globally on Netflix on September 8.

 
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