Wham! is the latest group to get the documentary treatment. On Thursday (June 15), Netflix shared the first trailer for its upcoming film about the duo — consisting of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley — about their road to stardom and the success that followed throughout the ’80s.
“We met when I was 11 and Andrew was 12,” a young Michael says in archival footage in the trailer. An older Ridgeley adds, “And there was only ever one thing that I wanted to do — be in a band with George.” The admiration was mutual, the “Careless Whisper” singer admits, saying that “Andrew changed my life in exactly the way someone needed to change my life if I was gonna be a pop star.”
Before finding major commercial success with singles such as 1984’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” Ridgeley shared that Michael often struggled with Wham!’s music not being taken seriously enough. “I never felt our music defined me in the same way it did for George. For George, chart position was the ultimate validation,” he says in the trailer.
In Michael’s own words, chart success acted as a mask for his sexual identity: “As a young gay man, I was just uncomfortable ’cause I was closeted. I was forging an identity through my success and by necessity, I went with full gusto into the progression of Wham!”
The trailer for the documentary features “access to both George and Andrew’s personal archive including remarkable and never-before-seen footage, alongside rare, candid and previously unheard interviews, WHAM! charts their incredible journey from school friends to superstars,” according to a press release from Netflix.
Wham! will arrive on the streaming platform on July 5. Watch the trailer above.
