Caroline Flack secretly working on tell-all documentary behind-the-scenes of trial before death: ‘She wanted to be heard’

Caroline Flack was secretly working with Channel 4 on a candid documentary in the weeks leading up to her death.

On December 12, 2019, Caroline was arrested and charged with assault following an altercation with boyfriend Lewis Burton, which she denied.

She subsequently lost her job on Love Island and was left shattered, but hoping to be heard the presenter wanted to tell her version of events in a film with Channel 4.

On February 13, 2020, Caroline died by suicide and the planned documentary was shelved but more than a year after the star’s tragic death, Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death is set to air, featuring close friends, colleagues, as well as her mother Christine and twin sister Jody.

The programme reveals unseen footage of Caroline sobbing after being dropped from the 2020 winter series of Love Island, a job, as she put it, she worked all her life for.

The film doesn’t cower from addressing the trials, tribulations, and negative press which came her way, highlighting stinging headlines and ‘hurtful’ digs from the likes of Lorraine Kelly and Graham Norton, and reveals Caroline’s long-suffering private battle with mental health.

Speaking at a Q&A, director Charlie Russell shed light on the documentary planned before Caroline died.

‘We met Caroline last year and we talked about making a doc for Channel 4 that would document what she was going through,’ he said. ‘[Executive producer] Dov Freedman and I chatted to her at length and we felt like there was a strong connection, although she was in the midst of everything and you could see the pressures of that was exerting on her, she was also very lovely and sweet to us and really interested.

‘I think following on from that we felt we owed her in some way to try and tell this story. We reached out to Christine and Jody later on and just started talking really. We talked about the film would like and what film they wanted to make first and foremost because it’s very much their film.’ 

‘Caroline was going through something quite unique at the time and she felt she really wanted to document that and that’s the conversation we had,’ Dov added. ‘I remember her being keen to introduce us to Chris and Jody, which is why a few months down the line we just wanted to pay our respects.’

‘She felt like she wasn’t speaking, she wasn’t being heard,’ he added. ‘Through the course of making this we worked really close with the family to work on something that could both celebrate Carrie and also capture a sense of her personality – what she was like and things she was proud of – but also be really honest about what happened to her and how that felt.’

Her Life and Death includes honest interviews with Christine and Jody Flack, who were swayed to give their seal of approval for the documentary after meeting Charlie and Dov.

‘I could see why she liked them, she trusted them,’ said Christine.

Jody was more reluctant to make the programme. ‘I didn’t see a reason to make it, there wasn’t enough of a reason to make it,’ she said.

‘But after talking together we came up with one, we thought there was a good reason.

‘She asked us to tell her story, quite close to the end she asked us to help her tell her story. We remember her bouncing out of the meeting and she immediately got on to the phone to us, “We’re going to make this film, you’re going to be in it.”

‘It was something we needed to do.’

Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death airs on Wednesday at 9pm on Channel 4.