Kylie Minogue Cancer Diagnosis & Netflix Doc Discussed By John Battsek

EXCLUSIVE: Kylie Minogue may have found fame when she was extremely young but the double Oscar-winning producer behind her Netflix doc feels her enduring appeal belongs with how “everyone and anyone can relate to her story.”

Speaking to Deadline as Kylie became the latest high-profile personal Netflix doc to launch, John Battsek said “millions of people feel like they are her friend.”

“The number of people who have been in touch to talk about how excited they are to see this series is because Kylie has played such a pivotal part in their lives,” said Battsek. “I think that is because she’s been through things and gone through trials and tribulations in her life in the same way that ordinary people do.”

While “she’s lived on a sort of pedestal since she was tiny,” Battsek feels that “everyone and anyone can relate to her story.” “She’s incredibly human and she’s incredibly relatable.”

He was speaking to Deadline on the day Kylie launched. One revelation to emerge from the doc, which is produced by Battsek’s company Ventureland, is that she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time just five years ago. She reveals the news in Episode 3 and says through tears that this is what her 2023 song “Story” is about. “My second cancer diagnosis was in early 2021. I was able to keep that to myself,” Minogue says in the doc. “Not like the first time. Thankfully, I got through it, again, and all is well.”

Minogue had received successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005 but she wasn’t able to keep this one out of the press. Her relatability is therefore all the more impressive given that the “Princess of Pop,” who started life as a child actress, landed a role in Neighbours and has since released some of the biggest pop tunes of all time, was “horribly treated by the media, particularly the male, middle-aged media,” Battsek said.

He added: “She was an up-and-coming pop star, she’s had trials and tribulations in her private life, she’s had health issues, she’s taken some blows, but every time she’s got back up and and ended up on stage performing whatever the latest incarnation of Kylie Minogue was and is.”

While Battsek joked that “everyone on every doc ever made” has said there was hundreds of hours of unseen footage to work with, this really was the case for someone who has been in the spotlight since she was six, giving director Michael Harte a rich seam of archive. “There’s thousands of hours no one will get to see in the three hours that they do get to see,” said Battsek.

He wasn’t a huge fan of Minogue’s when he was younger – “I thought I was much too cool for school and was listening to Prince obsessively,” he said – but has “grown to absolutely love her music” and thinks “it’s very helpful to not know everything about a subject” when you start researching a movie.

Another doc Ventureland produced was Netflix’s Beckham and director Fisher Stevens said “David Beckham, who is he?” when first approached, according to Battsek. “I think bringing that to the table with anyone who’s that famous can actually be a real asset to the process,” he added.

We won’t let subject dictate their doc, Battsek says

Beckham, which came out in 2023, was a huge hit for Netflix but came under fire somewhat at the time over Beckham’s contribution behind the scenes, which came at the same time as a broader debate about editorial independence. His Studio 99 indie had a producing credit although Netflix has insisted the soccer superstar didn’t watch the show until it premiered. Minogue was not involved behind the scenes with Kylie and “didn’t ask us to see a frame of anything” before watching the final cut several weeks back, Battsek said.

He said “there are instances where the subject dictates and has editorial control, but we won’t do that.”

“Inevitably when you make films about characters like Kylie, David [Beckham], Boris Becker or Eric Clapton, you show them their films at a certain point and have a meaningful consultation,” added Battsek. “They might say that there’s a couple of scenes they are not really comforable about but none of them have the ability to say, ‘You cannot do that’.”

Battsek, who won Oscars for Searching for Sugar Man and One Day in September, said, for example, that there was “plenty” about Ventureland’s Becker film for Apple TV that the tennis superstar didn’t like. “We talked about it but we never got him to a place where he liked it,” he added. “That’s unfortunate, because that’s the story, and it stayed in the story. That is how we go about making our films.”

Kylie is on Netflix now.