‘The Super Models’ Directors on Building Trust With Their Four Famous Subjects
variety.comDaniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic The documentarian Roger Ross Williams usually establishes trust by getting a meal with his subjects before shooting.
In the case of “The Super Models,” he and co-director Larissa Bills were meeting four legends. Cindy Crawford hosted the pair at her Malibu home; Christy Turlington took them to a bookstore in Manhattan; Naomi Campbell Zoomed them from her closet. (“She was very apologetic,” says Bills, but “her closet was as big as my apartment.”) In early 2020, Crawford, Turlington, Campbell and Linda Evangelista came to Imagine Entertainment with the notion of executive producing a documentary about their reign over fashion in the 1980s and ’90s.
Williams, an Oscar winner for 2009’s “Music by Prudence,” and Bills were brought in to tell their collective story of living as icons — and finding themselves as women.
And that’s how Williams ended up telling Evangelista about the House of Evangelista. On FX’s “Pose,” a group of drag ballroom performers borrow her name, and her hauteur. “I made this whole speech,” says Williams. “‘You’re iconic to these Black gay men.
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