After two years of filming, DMX: Don’t Try To Understand premiered on HBO Max over Thanksgiving. The documentary was directed by Chris Frierson and he recently spoke to Rolling Out about working with DMX. “You know that thing when you meet somebody famous and you’re super disappointed? It was the complete opposite of that,” Frierson said. “It was like everything I hoped for in a human being, I saw over a couple days. And I think possibly he saw something in our coverage that he wasn’t necessarily used to in the questions we were asking.”
Frierson also revealed that he checked himself into rehab for substance abuse days before DMX was hospitalized for an overdose. “That was hard [for me],” he said. “I partially owe my sobriety to him, to a certain extent, because the last thing he said to me was that I was going to be alright.”
Frierson said that he pitched the idea for the doc Mass Appeal back in 2018 around the time that DMX was sentenced to jail time for tax evasion. The initial plan was to shoot select scenes inside the West Virginia Federal prison where DMX was sent, but a warden denied the request. That forced Frierson and his team to wait until he was released in 2019 to begin shooting.
You can read Frierson’s full interview with Rolling Out here.
DMX: Don’t Try To Understand is out now on HBO Max.
