'I Love You, You Hate Me:' New documentary reveals the dark side of Barney the Dinosaur
You've never seen Barney like this.
A new NBC Peacock documentary is set to unveil the dark side of the lovable purple dinosaur in the two-part series, I Love You, You Hate Me.
The upcoming docu sees the likes of Bill Nye The Science Guy, Al Roker, and the children's show creator, Sheryl Leach, discussing how and why the 1990s series was met with so much hate and vitriol when it first aired.
"I Love You, You Hate Me is a limited series chronicling the rise and fall of Barney the Dinosaur’s furious backlash — and what it says about the human need to hate," the show's synopsis reads.
"From Barney-bashing to frat parties to homicidal video games, something in American society broke into a million pieces, and it’s never been put together again… or is this just who we were all along?"
In the trailer, Roker states that "As the beloved character was heading into the stratosphere, people couldn't accept that this was just a show. And so, let the bashing begin."
'90s home videos then show the dinosaur being burned, beheaded, smashed by a hammer, and even hanged by its haters.
Longtime Barney performer, Bob West, also shared how he was initially met with death threats for portraying the purple dinosaur.
"They were violent and explicit. Death and dismemberment of my family," he recalled. "They were gonna come and find me and they were going to kill me."
The trailer ends with an apparent shooting in the name of the children's TV character.
I Love You, You Hate Me is set to premiere on Peacock on Oct. 12. Check out its trailer here: