“Barney” docuseries trailer shows the dark side of the popular children’s series

The core message of the hugely popular children’s show Barney and Friends was to spread love and kindness to one another, but the trailer for a new Peacock docuseries underscores the idea that America wasn’t too keen on embracing that message.

In the trailer for the upcoming two-part docuseries I Love You, You Hate Me, several talking heads, from Science Guy’s Bill Nye to NBC’s Al Roker, share stories of how quickly the world turned against the friendly dinosaur and rejected values ​​of inclusion and respect. Bob West, a Barney cast member who dressed up for the cheerful purple dinosaur, shared that death threats have been made against his entire family. “They were violent and explicit, death and dismemberment of my family,” he says in the trailer. “They wanted to come and find me, and they wanted to kill me.”

Much of the dialogue in the trailer revolves around the show’s creator, Sheryl Leach, who developed the show alongside Kathy Parker and Dennis DeShazer in 1992 after initially creating home videos of the Barney character for their children. A stitched-together sequence of dialogue from multiple interviews in the trailer underscores the overall purpose of the Barney character: “Barney is inclusive, accepting. You should love everyone, we all have Sheryl Leach to thank for that.”

The Peacock docuseries was first announced last November and is from Scout Productions, the producers of Queer Eye. The two-part documentary is set to premiere on the streamer on October 12.

Check out the full trailer below.