Megan Thee Stallion lays it all bare, and then some, in her freshly released Prime Video documentary “Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words.” The two-hour film, which premiered last night at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, explores the concurrent rise of the Houston rapper and the aftermath of a highly publicized shooting involving Tory Lanez, who is currently serving a 10-year sentence in prison related to the incident.

Directed by Nneka Onuorah, the film is a frank, harrowing exploration of the emotional distress that manifests when trauma plays out in the court of public opinion. Throughout the film, Megan openly sheds tears and shares her deepest fears as her stock as a musician continues to rise. But she describes how she’s largely unable to enjoy it, plagued by a lack of confidence and trust in a world that continuously questions her truth.

Before diving into the film, now available to stream on Amazon, prep by catching up on what to expect from the latest from Megan.

The Doc Is Largely Focused on the Tory Lanez Shooting

Megan has had an astronomic rise over the past half-decade, and she traces her arc in the music industry from the beginning. Much like any superstar’s career, there are as many highs as there are lows, and the doc focuses largely on the biggest low of them all: Lanez shooting her in the feet after a night out. We see the anxiety, depression and even suicidal ideation manifest in the years that follow, and the lack of trust she imbues in others after her best friend Kelsey Nicole betrayed her in the aftermath.

It’s understandable that that’s the focus of the doc, and you witness just how deeply the shooting impacted her. She fears performing for the fact that a Lanez supporter may try to harm her while she’s on stage; she’s unable to get out of bed on some days, riddled with anxiety; she struggles with understanding why not a single person has her back. Those looking for insights into other very public aspects of her life and career over the past few years — her beef with Nicki Minaj, her legal woes — should search elsewhere.

Megan Had to Make the Heartbreaking Decision to End Her Mother’s Life

The documentary begins by focusing on her upbringing, and the close relationship she had with her late mother. Footage from the early days of her rap aspirations show her mother, who was also her manager, coaching Megan on the right way to punctuate certain words in her rhymes and shooting ad hoc music videos from lascivious angles.

You get a sense of how much Megan’s mother meant to her, not just as a parental figure but as an inspiration for her rap career. Through animated vignettes, Megan narrates how she would watch her mom write raps when she was young and how it inspired her to kickstart her own rap career. She describes showing her a YouTube video of her rapping for the first time, and how she was her biggest fan as she performed on the club circuit and beyond. (At one point, she shows a clip of her rehearsing on a stage as her mother, alone in the pit, cheers her on.)

Right as her career was about to take off, Megan gets a call from her mother that she isn’t feeling well, and that she needs to be taken to the hospital. They learn that she has a tumor in her brain, and not long after her mother signals that it’s more serious than they thought. Megan recalls the harrowing experience of having to pull the plug after her mother lost brain activity. “Once I realized she wasn’t coming back, I was just like, damn, I can’t keep her like this, because I knew she wouldn’t have wanted to stay like this. So I had to make the decision to I guess pull the plug, and she just passed the next day.”

“Yes, Bitch I Lied to Gayle King”

The gossip mill around the Tory Lanez shooting takes up a lot of space in Megan’s doc, and the effective toll it took on her. There are clips interspersed of social personalities like Joe Budden and Akademiks casting doubt on her claims in the case, plus flashes of posts on social media where some users went so far as to say that Lanez should have finished the job.

So much doubt had been placed on Megan’s claims that we see her in bed after an interview with Gayle King where she denied having a sexual relationship with Lanez. “Why are we not talking about the goddamn shooting? Everything has been a distraction from the shooting,” she says. “I used to be so confident in myself and I used to be… It wouldn’t have been a time where anybody would have asked me about fuckin’ somebody, and I would’ve been like, so? Yeah, I did that shit. I like to fuck, what about it? But the way they have villainized me for being this type of person, it started to make me second-guess myself.”

Thus, she admitted to having relations with Lanez, but with the caveat that it’s just a distraction from the point at hand. “Yes, bitch I lied to Gayle King, bitch,” she continued. “First of all, I ain’t even know that bitch was even going to ask me about that shit. She was going to talk about the shooting. Why is you asking me about fuckin’ Tory? That’s not what this about. Even if I was, I fucked that n— like once, maybe twice on a drunk night. But you kept catchin’ me out my fuckin’ mind.”

She Secretly Took a Mental Health Break in 2022

At the then-height of her career, Megan was scheduled to hit the stage at NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” as both host and musical guest. Just prior, we see her sit down with Roc Nation’s Sam Riddle to go over her upcoming commitments. “I feel like I’m going crazy, Sam, like I’m about to lose my mind. And I feel like I need to stop,” she says, her anxiety clearly needling at her. Riddle then walks her through the following weeks — “Gotta do that,” says Megan, defeatedly — before they get to an open month leading into her first Australian and New Zealand dates.

By this point, Megan has shared that her mental health is suffering, and we see it manifest during her “SNL” rendition of the aptly titled “Anxiety.” As tears stream down her face mid-performance, cameras cut to the green room where her teammates react. “I don’t think it’s a good thing, I think she’s stressed out,” says one. Megan dissects her performance backstage, unhappy with how it went as her team tries to lift her up. Then comes news that robbers broke into her California home knowing that she’d be rehearsing for the gig, and that Drake dropped a verse on a song where he claimed Megan was lying about Lanez shooting her.

All of this culminates with a much-needed mental health retreat. She schedules it for two weeks, starting in Nov. 2022, but extends it for a month and cancels her Australian shows. Cut to a month later, when Megan returns, sharing her experience with her team. “Bitch ducked off in my own world,” she said. “I am OK, it’s going to sound stupid but I went to a wellness retreat and I took so many different types of therapies and I just feel like a new bitch.”

Megan Isn’t Fully Healed From the Shooting

Even after Tory Lanez was convicted in shooting Megan in 2020, Megan still doesn’t feel completely vindicated. Much of the film explores the deleterious effect that being scrutinized and judged in the court of public opinion had on her, and how helpless and scared she felt even as her star continued to rise. One of the most satisfying moments in the film comes as Megan waits around in her backyard with her manager for the verdict to land on Lanez’s case. She sits listlessly, staring off into the distance, as the sun begins to set, when she gets news that Lanez was convicted of three felony charges.

It’s a redemptive moment in not just the film, but also her life. She openly weeps, thanking god for justice being served and clinging to the hope that it brings her the vindication she’s sought for years. Only, it doesn’t.

“I really thought that once he got sentenced and once he went off to jail, I was going be a new woman and I thought I was going to be great and I could just go be the Megan Thee Stallion I always wanted to be. No. I still, every day, have to deal with people mad at me because I said what happened to me,” she says. But, it comes with an asterisk. “I do feel like I’m getting in a place where I really don’t care. I only care about my damn self. For the first time since my mama was alive, I’m taking care of myself, because I want to feel good. Everything I do is for me. And I don’t feel like I’m operating at one-million percent now, but I definitely feel like I’m operating better. I do feel hopeful for what’s next for me.”