In Kevin Hart‘s latest release on Netflix, True Story, he plays a character by the name of Kid, a comedian who rose up from nothing to become rich and famous. While audiences may, at first, believe this is to set up parallels to his own life, and while there are crumbs of truth to that statement (like the intense, busy schedules both Kid and Kevin face in their day-to-day lives) it is primarily rooted in fiction. Over the series’ seven episodes, audiences get to see things go from good to bad to worse as a tour stop in Philadelphia and a chance to see his brother leads Kid to land in some heavy trouble that would ruin his career if it came out. As the story develops, so too does the complexity of the situation.
What started out as an attempt to cover up an overdose of a woman that Kid had slept with ends up becoming an anxiety-inducing quest to hide the body of a Greek mob boss by the name of Ari. Kid killed Ari after he attempted to extort Kid for six million dollars in exchange for disposing of the body of said woman. The death of Ari sparks a chain of events that continuously adds more and more tension to every scene as Kid and his brother, Carlton (played by Wesley Snipes), fight to keep things under wraps from the public. As a result, Ari’s two brothers end up taking the life of Kid’s superfan, Gene, who is framed by Carlton as a way to tie up multiple loose ends at once.
Unfortunately for Carlton, that ends up backfiring, and Ari’s brothers find out that they have been deceived. In a fit of rage, they attempt to confront and kill Carlton as well as Kid in the show’s final episode. A shootout at the Wells Fargo Center ends up with Kid and Carlton trapped in a hallway with the assailants. Luckily for them, Kid finds an opportunity to kill both of Ari’s brothers. Relieved, Carlton begins to talk about how he will take the fall for everything before being shot dead by Kid himself.
These events take place shortly after the reveal that the woman Kid thought overdosed was actually Carlton’s girlfriend, and that she was never really dead in the first place. As it turns out, the whole situation was a scheme concocted by Carlton to get more money out of Kid. This is what led Kid to shoot and kill his brother in an attempt to stop the cycle of exploitation and deceit. To cover his tracks, Kid made the scene look like the Greek brothers killed Carlton before Kid killed them back in retaliation. However, the episode does not conclude at this scene. Instead, we get to see what happens afterwards, and how the public sees the events that happened.
Three days after the shooting, we see Kid preparing to go live and explain what happened, as well as how he will attempt to move forward. Before that interview, he is confronted by his bodyguard, Herschel (William Catlett), about what Kid and Carlton talked about at the Wells Fargo Center. Furious with Kid for putting his life at risk without even telling him what was going on, Herschel demands that the six million dollars requested by Ari be, instead, paid to him as compensation if he still wants his protection. Kid accepts without a second thought, saying “The reason why [the money is yours] is because you actually watch my back. And you gonna continue to watch my back.” Herschel agrees and leaves, to which Kid’s manager, Todd (Paul Adelstein), immediately begins explaining that he’ll talk to Herschel.
Kid shuts him down, explaining to Todd that they’ll get the extra six million dollars from the company that already wanted to make a sequel to the hit movie Kid had just finished making with them. He says they can get away with this by telling them that the money is compensation for giving up the time he wanted to spend with his son, something that he had originally made very clear that he wanted to do before shooting the sequel. This is another example of how Kid is willing to give up what he wants to do in exchange for doing what he feels he needs to in order to keep his career.
The series concludes with an interview with Kid, the same one that we saw a portion of at the beginning of episode one. We find out that Kid painted the story as Ari and the woman being together and trying to extort Kid, with Carlton killing them as revenge for attempting to trick his brother. Audiences, of course, know that this is a lie, but it paints Kid out of the situation entirely, stating that he had no clue what was going on throughout the events. He says that he will continue the tour in dedication to Gene and Carlton because they would have wanted him to continue to be successful and that he wants to try and become “…the best guy that I can…that’s the only way to give my story a happy ending.”
True Story depicts a series of events that reveal the true nature of Kid. Just like he mentions in the interview, “When a person’s back is against the wall and they gotta do whatever they can to keep from losing what they got, that’s when you get to see who a person is.” This opening statement that is given at the beginning of the series comes to adopt a new meaning. The statement, reiterated at the end of the series, is meant to say that viewers now know the kind of person Kid is. He murdered all three of the Greek mob bosses and his own brother to keep his career and image safe. Viewers go from seeing Kid as this innocent bystander who got roped into a bad situation to seeing him as this ruthless, almost emotionless man who was willing to do whatever it took to keep what he worked so hard to achieve afloat, be that giving six million dollars to his bodyguard or murdering his own brother and burning off the leech that he was revealed to be.
It is also a reminder to viewers to never believe that you fully know someone until you’ve seen them at their worst – especially celebrities. As was the case with Gene, believing too much in celebrities and their status can be harmful towards one’s own wellbeing and safety, as it is unhealthy to depict any living person as a hero who can do no wrong. It can become easy to only see the bright side of a person who only shows you that side, just like how Kid had done to Gene and many of his other fans. While Kid attempted to help Gene understand that he was only human and that he makes mistakes, it cannot be ignored that Gene’s hero manipulated him into doing what he wanted, and that is just one action that Kid does that makes viewers wonder: are we supposed to root for Kid and be happy that he got away with murder?
Whether you were happy that Kid was able to keep his image, or you feel a little gross inside that he was able to get away with killing his own brother, True Story succeeds in using the last episode to really make you sit down and re-evaluate how you perceive others, especially people like celebrities. It offers an important lesson in understanding that actually “knowing” somebody is much harder to achieve than one might think.
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