HBO Max on Thursday released the first trailer for an upcoming documentary about Miss Cleo, the ’90s TV psychic known for the popular catchphrase “Call me now!”
The teaser for “Call Me Miss Cleo,” premiering on the streaming service Dec. 15, shows various speakers reflecting on the life of the tarot reader, whose legal name was Youree Dell Harris.
“Who’s the real Miss Cleo? The web of stories, it seems, is far and wide,” one person says.
“Cleo may have been a character to cope with whatever was going on in her life, but it was still very real for her,” says another.
Actor Debra Wilson, who parodied Miss Cleo on the sketch comedy series “Mad TV” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is also featured in the video.
“Don’t be fooled by thinking what you know is the whole story,” Wilson tells the camera.
The new documentary touches on some of the major controversies surrounding Harris, who famously pitched pay-per-call services on TV commercials with a faux-Jamaican accent.
Among them is a federal lawsuit from 2002 that was filed against Psychic Readers Network, the hotline business she promoted. The Federal Trade Commission eventually announced that Psychic Readers Network and Access Resource Services, the company behind the hotline, had agreed to forgive approximately $500 million in outstanding consumer charges and pay a $5 million fine.
Harris died in 2016 following a battle with cancer. She was 53.
Senain Kheshgi, the director of “Call Me Miss Cleo,” told Deadline in a statement earlier this year that Harris “may have been an accomplice or perhaps a victim in the ... [Psychic Readers Network] fraud but she also had talent and personality, which for women doesn’t always translate into access or wealth.”
“Her story is an example of how brown and Black women have historically been marginalized and exotified in society and popular culture,” she added.