Sioux Falls man shares story of friendship for new Anna Nicole Smith documentary

The new Netflix documentary that drops this week is called “Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me.”

But Sioux Falls reality star and influencer Mitchell Olson did know the model and actress born Vickie Lynn Hogan, well enough that he was interviewed for the documentary, from director Ursula Macfarlane and producer Alexandra Lacey.

“Hopefully this will be the one that reveals everything,” Olson said. “I did reveal the truth.”

The documentary is being promoted as “an unflinching and humanizing examination of the life, death, and secrets” of Smith, who ascended to stardom after a 1992 appearance in Playboy and died of an overdose in 2007, months after the birth of her daughter Dannielynn and leading to a legal dispute over who was the child’s father.

Olson’s path crossed with Smith in the early 2000s after his appearance on the reality show “Survivor” He was invited to appear on an entertainment reality show starring Smith that was planning to feature “her going out with different suitors,” Olson said. “It checked all the boxes for me. Is it hilarious? Yes. Is it totally bonkers and off the wall and all the things I like to do? So I was game right away.”

They ended up filming a couple days at her house, and while Smith knew right away the shoot was completely for show, “we became best friends,” Olson said. “We just had this really fun relationship friendship. She helped me through some things when I was feeling really down about the press coming at me right after Survivor, and I was having a really hard time. The press was trying to pull me out of the closet, and she knew I was gay. She say something like, ‘You gays all love me,’ so she helped me through a lot and I felt like I was there to help her.”

They began regularly chatting on AOL Instant Messenger — for those who remember that one — where her screen name was “Hotsmoochielips” and she was regularly online.

“I was terrible sleeping, so we’d talk back and forth about all sorts of crazy, funny things,” Olson said. “And she’d come to New York for things and we’d hang out, and I’d hang out in LA for weeks on end.”

Smith came to Nebraska once to attend a children’s benefit with Olson.

There have been other attempts to document Smith’s life but none that captures the full story, Olson said.

“This particular documentary is really going to dive into who Anna was, and a lot of it is going to come from the voice of Anna. They were able to find some missing video tapes from the 90s with Anna on them,” he said. “They also reached out to people who had never been reached out to before. These producers, I think, are dedicated to getting at the heart of who Anna was and figuring out exactly what happened at the end.”

Her final months were tumultuous and tragic, Olson said. Smith lost her 20-year-old son, Daniel, three days after the birth of her daughter while he was visiting them in the hospital. His autopsy was reported to determine he died from a combination of drugs.

“I was close with him too,” Olson said. “Whenever we’d go to LA, we would hang out, and if she wasn’t in the mood to do something we’d go to the movies … she just couldn’t get over that the love of her life, her son, had died of drugs. She was devastated her son died and she never pulled out of it and I saw it in her.”

The last time he talked with Smith by phone, “she was a mess,” Olson said. “I could tell she wasn’t herself on the phone, probably a couple months before (she died) and I knew from the call she had flipped back into it.”

She had told Olson she’d planned to quit drinking and drug use during pregnancy, and “as far as I knew, she did, and of course Daniel dying sent her over the edge,” he said.

He was in Hawaii on a work assignment when he learned the news on television that his good friend had died.

“My phone was blowing up,” he said. “I was still heartbroken (Daniel) had died too, and I couldn’t believe they had both died.”

For Olson, the tragedy also marked a turning point, personally. He and Smith “both had high anxiety and certain things we used, pills or alcohol, to self-medicate,” he said. “We didn’t think we were doing anything that was going to make us die. I guarantee you we wouldn’t have been as loose about it. When it ended up ending her life, for me it it made a turn on my own decision to use pills, my own idea of what’s recreational and what doctors mean when they give you these meds. I had a complete awakening when she passed away.”

He said his computer was subpoenaed as part of the legal investigation, including his conversations with Smith. DNA testing later determined Dannielynn’s biological father was entertainment photographer Larry Birkhead.

Olson spoke about the controversy in the documentary.

“I would think, for sure, I know what her feelings were about Larry. I have words from her I’ve saved, so I feel very confident in what I said about what she felt and different things she said, because I was in communication with her,” he said. “I know that she would have wanted her story to come out and the truth to come out. She would have been very supportive of anything like this.”