The core message of the immensely popular “Barney and Friends” kids show was to spread love and kindness to one another, but the trailer for a new Peacock docuseries highlights the idea that America was not so eager to accept that message.
In the trailer for the upcoming two-part docuseries “I Love You, You Hate Me,” multiple talking heads, from Bill Nye the Science Guy to NBC’s Al Roker, share stories of how quickly the world turned against the friendly dinosaur, rejecting its values of inclusion and respect. Bob West, a Barney performer who stepped into costume for the happy purple dinosaur, shared that death threats were made against his entire family. “They were violent and explicit, death and dismemberment of my family,” he says in the trailer. “They were gonna come and find me, and they were going to kill me.”
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Much of the dialogue in the trailer surrounds the show’s creator, Sheryl Leach, who developed the show in 1992 alongside Kathy Parker and Dennis DeShazer after initially creating home videos of the Barney character for her children. A spliced string of dialogue from multiple interviews in the trailer underscores the general purpose of the Barney character: “Barney stands for inclusion, acceptance. You should love everyone, we all have Sheryl Leach to thank for that.”
The Peacock docuseries was first announced in November of last year and hails from Scout Productions, the producers of “Queer Eye.” The two-part docuseries is set to premiere Oct. 12 on the streamer.
Check out the full trailer below.
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