Everyone wants the purple dinosaur to go extinct in the new trailer for I Love You, You Hate Me. The two-part docuseries about the dark side of Barney & Friends will debut October 12th on Peacock.
I Love You, You Hate Me chronicles the spectacular rise and suffocating backlash to an early ’90s children’s sensation. “It just exploded nationwide,” one woman said. Former Barney David Joyner added ,”As [creator Sheryl Leach’s] beloved character was heading into the stratosphere, people couldn’t accept that this was just a show. And so, let the bashing begin.”
This included playground chants — this author recalls, “I hate you/ You hate me/ Let’s get together and kill Barney” — but the fallout extended to the performers on the show. One person recounted rumors that, “Barney hides drugs in his tail.” Bob West, one of the performers who played Barney, remembered death threats. “They were violent and explicit, death and dismemberment of my family,” he said. “They were gonna come and find me, and they were going to kill me.”
The series is directed by Tommy Avallone. “Barney came out on television when I was just 10 years old, and I admittedly didn’t understand him,” he said in a statement to PEOPLE. “As a teenager, for one of my birthdays I asked my aunt to make me a Barney costume, so my friends and I could beat him up on camera. Several years later, creating this docuseries, it feels good to be on the other side and no longer a Barney hater. Now having children of my own, I understand all the love that went into making the purple dinosaur.”
Check out the trailer for I Love You, You Hate Me below. If you’re more on the “love” side of that equation, know that Daniel Kaluuya is working on a live-action Barney movie.
