Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Vivian Kubrick slammed Dr. Phil’s interview with Shelley Duvall and called for a boycott of the shocking episode. In a preview, the 67-year-old actress looked unrecognizable from her heyday as a movie star in the 1970s and 80s and revealed that she’s been struggling with a serious mental illness.
Vivian, whose late father famously directed Duvall in 1980’s The Shining, wrote an open letter to the talk show host, 66, on Twitter on Tuesday, November 16. “Dear Dr. Phil,” she wrote. “You are putting Shelly Duvall ‘on show’ while she is suffering from a pitiable state of ill health. Unquestionably, this is purely a form of lurid and exploitative entertainment — it’s appallingly cruel.”
The filmmaker, 56, continued, “Shelly Duvall was a movie star … whatever dignity a mere unfortunate creature might have in this world, is denied her by you displaying her in this way.”
Vivian ended her note by urging others to avoid tuning in to Dr. Phil’s broadcasts. “I recoil in complete disgust. I hope others will join me in boycotting your utterly heartless form of entertainment, because it has nothing to do with compassionate healing,” she wrote, signing it “Sincerely disgusted, Vivian Kubrick.”
In the Dr. Phil episode set to air on Friday, November 18, Duvall claims that her late Popeye costar Robin Williams is not really dead and that he’s become a shape-shifter. She also believes that she’s being threatened by the Sheriff of Nottingham, a fictional character from Robin Hood, and thinks that there’s a disc implanted in her skin.
“I’m very sick. I need help,” Duvall says in the clip.
