Joe Pearlman, director of Netflix’s Untold: The Liver King, said the moment he entered Brian Johnson’s house he could already sense the act.
From that first day, Pearlman was waiting for Johnson to break character. But even as the cameras rolled through moments of PED injections, staged bull slaughters and revisionist history, Johnson never dropped the performance.
One moment stood out.
“He went to this little fridge that they had kind of carved out in the bathroom and picked out his human growth hormone and just took it in front of us and like kind of looked me in the eyes.”
“He had to do that in front of me,” Pearlman explained. “There were multiple times that he did that, but he had to from the beginning… he wanted the film to admit and acknowledge the fact that he was doing all of those things.”
That moment happened on day one. Johnson not only admitted to using PEDs—he made a show of it. This wasn’t a man caught by accident. It was someone performing the lie directly into the lens.
Pearlman said Johnson’s story changed constantly. One moment he was a failed supplement hustler. The next, a father whose kids were allegedly healed by raw meat. The documentary shows all of it—and none of it adds up.
“You know what? F**k it. I’m just going to tell you everything.”
That was the line Johnson gave three days into the main interview. What followed were admissions of stealing from GNC, pushing banned products and lying about his backstory.
Pearlman declined to say whether he believed the story about Johnson’s sons being ill. The implication, though, was obvious.
“I think you see my opinion in the footage.”
The documentary captured the family choosing to slaughter a bull for content. Pearlman said it was orchestrated. Not because they needed meat—but because the freezer wasn’t full and the algorithm needed feeding.
Throughout the process, Pearlman came to one conclusion—Johnson needs attention.
“I think he’s desperate for attention, desperate for friends and kind of desperate for some love.”
His wife, Pearlman said, seemed to tolerate the lie because of the money. The property. The lifestyle. No one was stopping the fantasy when the checks cleared.
The entire Liver King operation was performance art, and according to Pearlman, the internet made it possible.
“Because of the internet, there’s no traditional gatekeeping that happens when these people are allowed to become experts on things.”
The filmmaker’s skepticism extends beyond just the health claims. Throughout the documentary process, Pearlman encountered what he describes as layers of deception from Johnson, whose real name is Brad Johnson. During their master interview, conducted over three days, Johnson admitted to a pattern of lies dating back to his youth, including stealing from supplement retailer GNC and selling PEDs.
