Peacock’s three-part Girls Gone Wild docuseries pulls back the curtain on Joe Francis‘ multi-million dollar empire — and its ultimate downfall after being plagued with controversies.
In Us Weekly‘s exclusive clip from Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story, which premieres on Tuesday, December 3, a woman named Trista recalled being put on the cover of a Girls Gone Wild videotape during the franchise’s heyday.
“I flashed the camera. I give them verbal consent on the camera. But I have no recollection of talking to somebody on camera,” she recalled. “I am in shock and kind of in a little bit of denial. There is no way that’s me. That isn’t me.”
Trista said the situation “snowballed quickly” after a clip of her was featured prominently, adding, “And you let it sink in and you are like, ‘Holy s—, that is me.’ I would say within a couple of weeks literally everybody that I knew knew about it. But I didn’t find out I was on the cover of one until a few weeks later when someone brought it to my attention and sent me a picture.”
After being included on a tape released from the adult entertainment company, Trista faced major issues in her personal life.
“Well, that just made things a little bit worse for me,” she noted. “People would post pictures of my family. Me, my mom, my dad and my brother. They would put them on sites, writing, ‘This is this girl.’ So you have no privacy.”
Trista specifically called out the company’s creator, saying, “I don’t think it is ethical. I think it is immoral. I feel like they think it is OK because Joe Francis and his team at Girls Gone Wild tried to make it OK.”
Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story relies on first-person accounts from former employees, survivors and Francis himself to help explain the company’s rise to fame in the late ’90s and early 2000s. The docuseries features Francis’s first expansive interview in nearly a decade with journalist Scaachi Koul visiting his Mexican compound in 2022 for an unfiltered conversation.
According to the synopsis, the Peacock special will explore the multi-million dollar business that was “built around the idea of Spring Breakers exposing themselves on camera for T-shirts and hats.” The purpose of the documentary is to understand how Girls Gone Wild “shaped American pop culture and sparked significant debate on exploitation, consent, and the ethics of entertainment.”
The trailer, which was released last month, offered a glimpse at the emotional interviews.
“I never thought that that would come back and haunt me for 20 years,” one survivor said in the sneak peek clip, while another claimed, “I was too young to be taped.”
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Francis, meanwhile, could be heard saying in a clip from a previous interview, “If I took no for an answer, I wouldn’t be where I was!” The entrepreneur was asked whether he felt “bad for the girls” more than two decades later but his response wasn’t included in the video.
After getting its start being promoted on late-night infomercials, Girls Gone Wild blew up and made $20 million in just its first two years. The company later faced a multitude of lawsuits after being accused of using footage of minors, filming without consent, causing emotional distress to those being featured in Girls Gone Wild films and more.
Francis, for his part, was convicted of child abuse and prostitution, tax evasion and bribery, assault and false imprisonment and ordered to pay out millions in a defamation lawsuit. He has denied any wrongdoing and publicly stood by his company’s reputation. After Francis was sentenced for taking three women to his L.A. home, refusing to let them leave and bashing one woman’s head against his tile floor.
“I disagree with the jury’s verdict as I am completely innocent of the charges and intend to appeal,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “I was afforded a fair trial, and if I lose at the appellate level, I will reluctantly but fully accept the jury’s verdict.”
Francis has since left for Mexico and has not returned to the U.S. “Hundreds of thousands of women appeared on Girls Gone Wild just like hundreds of thousands of women appear on Instagram in their bathing suits and on Twitter topless,” he wrote to Koul in a 2023 email for her profile on him. “No one seems to care. They are free to do as they wish.”
Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story premieres on Peacock Tuesday, December 3.
