Mystery swirls in the new trailer for HBO Max's Miss Cleo documentary
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Have you ever wondered what was really going on with Miss Cleo?
It's too bad we don't have a hotline to call and get that answer, but HBO Max hopes its new documentary Call Me Miss Cleo will do the trick.
Call Me Miss Cleo delves into the complicated life of Youree Dell Harris, who rose to late-night infomercial fame in the late '90s as the Jamaican-accented, tarot card–wielding, self-described "voodoo priestess" who served as the charismatic face of the telephone hotline service Psychic Readers Network and urged viewers to "call me now!" No punches were pulled, but punchlines were issued when Miss Cleo counseled her callers.
The Federal Trade Commission would later charge the owners of the company (not Harris) with defrauding customers via deceptive advertising and billing. And it would later be revealed that Harris, who died of cancer in 2016, was not everything she appeared to be. (Although she claimed to be Jamaican, she was born in Los Angeles and began her career as an actress and playwright.)
Was she taking advantage of people, or was she being taken advantage of? Did she believe what she was selling? These are some of the questions explored in directors Jennifer Brea and Celia Aniskovich's new doc, the trailer of which you can exclusively preview above.
"Cleo may have been a character to cope with, whatever was going on in her life," observes the psychic adviser's godson Matt Rucker, "but it was still very real for her."
Call Me Miss Cleo features interviews with more than 20 people who were "closest to her," according to the streaming service. Celebrity fans Raven-Symoné and Debra Wilson also appear as talking heads.
"It was the best Insta Live you could have had in 1997!" quips Raven-Symoné.
As Harris herself says in one archival interview: "They wanted me to create a character. I'm not a character. I'm a real person."
Call Me Miss Cleo begins streaming Dec. 15 on HBO Max. And you may have predicted this, but it's not the only documentary about Harris in the works.
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