The first rule of any good biopic: make sure your subject hates it

Hell hath no fury like a celebrity portrayed in a mildly unflattering light by a Hollywood biopic. And if the celeb happens to no longer be around, you can count on their nearest and dearest to take offence on their behalf – whether or not they’ve actually seen the film or series in question.

That has certainly been the response of the family of Eighties New York designer Halston to a new Netflix drama in which Ewan McGregor stars as the mononymous fashionista.

“The Halston Archives and Family were not consulted on the upcoming Netflix series,” the estate said in a statement released by the late designer’s niece Lesley Frowick. It also slammed the drama as “an inaccurate, fictionalised account” of the life and times of Halston, who died in 1990 aged 57 as a result of Aids-related cancer.

The question is, of course, whether the family is concerned about falsehoods – or if the objection has to do with producer Ryan Murphy raking over the more scandalous aspects of Halston’s rise and fall?

“Roy Halston Frowick was living on a diet of baked potatoes with beluga caviar, chilled Stolichnaya, rent boys and mounds of cocaine piled in Elsa Peretti silver ashtrays,” begins a recent New York Times profile of the show. No matter how you square it, the rent boys and the cocaine in silver ashtrays were always going to be problematic for the family.

Perhaps that’s as it should be. “Authorised” biopics are inevitably sanitised and bloodless. Queen were fully on board with Bohemian Rhapsody, which went out of its way to paint the band as approachable rock gods (only Freddie Mercury was depicted as in any way flawed – and he obviously wasn’t around to object).

And when Dr Dre and Ice Cube co-produced a film retelling the early years of their band NWA, they, of course, left out the less savoury aspects of that story. So while Straight Out Of Compton was enjoyable hip hop nostalgia it glossed over key parts of the story, such as Dre’s history of abuse of women, including his notorious assault on journalist Dee Barnes.

The industry appears to have learned its lesson. A deluge of biopics is on the way and several have already drawn the disapproval of the people they are about. Pamela Anderson is reportedly horrified Lily James – fresh from annoying us all in The Pursuit of Love – is to play the actress at the peak of her Baywatch fame in Pam and Tommy, with Sebastian Stan as her Mötley Crüe husband Tommy Lee.

Her romance with the drug-using drummer was, said a “source”, a testing period for her: she had no wish to see it blown up onto the screen. The friend added: “That whole thing was extremely traumatic for Pamela, it was one of the most difficult experiences of her life”.

The other issue was that Anderson regarded neither James nor Stan as sufficiently famous. “She’s never heard of the actors playing her or Tommy, and doesn’t care to know them. She and her family think the show is a cheap knockoff. The whole thing is a joke to them…Pamela has no intention of watching this God awful show, absolutely not. Never.”

Likewise up in arms are the Gucci family, who have expressed horror at Ridley Scott’s “horrible” and “ugly” House of Gucci. The film delves into traumatic chapter in the life of the fashion dynasty. It tells the story of the tragic marriage of Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) and Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) – Reggiani was convicted of her husband’s assassination in 1998 having hired a hitman to kill him.

“They are stealing the identity of a family to make a profit, to increase the income of the Hollywood system,” said Patrizia Gucci, a second cousin of Maurizio. “Our family has an identity, privacy. We can talk about everything, but there is a borderline that cannot be crossed.”

Fittingly for a fashion house, the objections are as much aesthetic as ethical. The family was appalled by recent images from the set of Al Pacino as Aldo Gucci, a father figure in the empire.

“My grandfather was a very handsome man, like all the Guccis, and very tall, blue eyes and very elegant,” said Patrizia Gucci. “He is being played by Al Pacino, who is not very tall already, and this photo shows him as fat, short, with sideburns, really ugly. Shameful, because he doesn’t resemble him at all.”

In the case of Halston, Ryan Murphy could be forgiven a degree of déjà vu. His retelling of the OJ Simpson trial, The People v OJ Simpson: America Crime Story, was criticised by Simpson on the basis the actor chosen to play him, Cuba Gooding Jr, was insufficiently hulking. Simpson was particularly upset by the dimensions of Gooding Jr’s head, which he felt “too small”.

Murphy was also attacked for his depiction of Gianni Versace in season two of American Crime Story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, with the late designer’s family stating they “neither authorised nor had any involvement whatsoever” in the “work of fiction”.

These objections appear not to have put Murphy off his stride: Halston is as giddily melodramatic as anything on his CV. That said, he is taking a different route with the forthcoming third season of American Crime Story, about Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky (to be played by Beanie Feldstein).

This time, Murphy is working hand-in-hand with one of his subjects, as the project has the blessing of Lewinsky. In fact, Murphy essentially made it for Lewinsky, having run into her at a party.

“I told her, 'Nobody should tell your story but you, and it's kind of gross if they do,'” he said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “If you want to produce it with me, I would love that; but you should be the producer and you should make all the goddamn money.”

Having started with a pep talk like that, it is hard to imagine the series bringing even a mildly negative perspective to bear on Lewinsky (it will presumably be another matter for Clive Owen’s Bill Clinton). But is there a danger that, in siding with Lewinsky, Murphy will give her version of the scandal rather than the gory truth?

That it is necessary for a biopic to go full warts-and-all was acknowledged by, of all people, the American talk show host David Letterman. He saw shocked to see himself depicted in unflattering fashion in a 1996 HBO film, The Late Shift, about his war for supremacy with Jay Leno. Yet with hindsight he appreciated the portrayal was perhaps more truthful that he would have liked to think.

“The guy who’s playing me - and I'm sure he's a fine actor - but his interpretation seems to be that I'm, well, a circus chimp. He looks like he's insane, like he's a budding psychopath. And afterward I thought, “Well, maybe this is how I strike people as being.””