Exclusive Clip From Peacock’s Gary Coleman Doc Reveals The Child Star Often Dreamed Of A “Future” Where He Wasn’t “The Butt Of The Joke”

Peacock‘s new documentary GARY offers a revelatory look into the tumultuous life of former child actor Gary Coleman.

Coleman rose to fame after starring in the ’70s sitcom Diff’rent Strokes as Arnold Jackson, a spunky child who gets adopted by a rich New York City businessman. But he later felt plagued by fame, according to the new documentary from filmmaker Robin Dashwood.

In an exclusive clip shared with DECIDER, Coleman’s friend Anna Gray is seen walking Mulholland Drive at night and reflecting on their friendship.

“Gary often didn’t sleep well so lot of times we’d just drive along here along Mulholland Drive and look out on the city,” she explains. “[Gary] liked outer space and the idea of space exploration. It was just a way of hoping and dreaming about that better future that [he] wanted to live in.”

Gray continues, “It wouldn’t be about Black or white, or male or female, tall, short, rich, poor, any of that. He thought in a future like that that he could have been treated with all of the respect he deserved and not as the butt of the joke.”  

The Peacock documentary offers an inside look at how Coleman struggled with fame and the increased attention it brought him. In an old interview featured in the documentary, the actor even confesses, “If someone had of told me my life would’ve been like this, early enough where I could’ve got out, I would’ve got out.”

Coleman moved to Utah in the last five years of his life to escape the public attention. It was there in Santaquin that he would meet his wife, then 19-year-old Shannon Price. They divorced in 2008 after just one year of marriage, but she lived with him until he died in 2010.

Dashwood told The Salt Lake City Tribune, “He was very suspicious of people by that point, and that’s part of the reason he wanted to move to Utah. He found he wasn’t treated like Gary, the Hollywood star, in Utah. He was treated as himself.”

The documentary also explores the controversial circumstances surrounding his untimely death at the age of 42. He suffered a brain hemorrhage after he sustained a head injury from a fall, which some skeptics blamed on Price.

Price is one of several figures close to Coleman who appears in the Peacock documentary, including Coleman’s estranged parents, who allegedly took $770,000 from his earnings as a child actor. The doc also features Coleman’s Diff’rent Strokes co-star Todd Bridges.

“I hope we avoid being exploitative by not turning it into a highly dramatic, slightly trashy thing. We lay out the case, and let everybody speak and present the facts,” Dashwood said of the film.

He added that he hopes viewers are “reminded what a great talent he was, and I hope that they’ll feel rather moved by the many challenges that he had. … It’s a very tragic story, but hopefully an inspiring one at the same time.”

Scroll up to check out the exclusive clip.

GARY premieres on Peacock Thursday (Aug. 29).