Kylie Minogue Netflix docuseries releases first trailer, promises personal insight into pop princess’ life

“Kylie is this force, it’s all outward-giving.”

Those words are from Nick Cave and you won’t find anyone in the world who would disagree.

Cave is just one of the talking heads in the upcoming three-part docuseries about Australia’s premier pop princess, Kylie Minogue, which is due to land on Netflix in two weeks’ time.

Sometimes you forget Minogue is only 57 because it seems as if she’s been part of the Australian cultural fabric forever. In all seriousness, 40 years is a long time, and it’s about time Minogue’s career and her significance as an icon is immortalised as a docuseries.

All the cool kids are doing it, and this series is being produced by the production company behind the Beckham and WHAM docos.

The trailer dropped today with the promise of not just a survey through Minogue’s career through its many iterations – actor, singer, icon – but will also very much go into her experience with breast cancer at age 36

At the time, she had to postpone a greatest hits tour to undergo chemotherapy and a lumpectomy. Reflecting on that time in the documentary, she recalled in the trailer, “I felt removed from my body, I was so scared of what was ahead of me”.

That period of her life looks to be one of the focuses of the project, with the trailer also featuring sister Dannii telling the camera, “We didn’t know if she would be well again but I just wanted to be with my sister, music kept us going”.

The production said the three episodes would feature footage from home videos and personal photographs, plus there are four decades worth of archival footage from a career that spanned screens, stages and recording studios, and around the world.

Minogue’s first TV role came in 1979, had a teeny, weeny stint on Young Talent Time alongside her sister, but her proper breakthrough was in 1986 when she landed the gig of Charlene Robinson on the then new soap opera, Neighbours.

Charlene, alongside Jason Donovan’s Scott, were Australia’s TV sweethearts. Their wedding episode was watched by two million people locally (population at the time: 16 million), but reached 20 million viewers in the UK.

She won four Logies in one year – for most popular actress, most popular personality on TV, most popular personality on Victorian TV and most popular music video.

But that was all just a prelude, because it’s in music where Minogue will make her real mark.

As the documentary has promised to parse, it didn’t start well, and as Minogue has talked about in the past. Those early critical reactions to her pivot were ruthless. She was cruelly dubbed the “singing budgie” and had been called “mediocre” and “talentless”.

Minogue’s many triumphs are well documented, but what fans really want are the personal insights and recollections from a massive life. It’s had to imagine they’ll even be able to cram into just three hours.

Minogue sits down with the filmmakers, plumbing through personal heartaches and loss as well as joys and celebrations, plus testimonials from her family, Cave, Donovan and producer Pete Waterman – the latter helped launch Minogue’s music career and was instrumental to her success.

From what can be glimpsed in the two-minute trailer, that will include her cancer battle, her relationship with Michael Hutchence, those early disappointments and criticisms of her music career, and the strange life of an international superstar as tens of thousands of people scream your name in unison.

We all think we know Kylie, but do we really know her? We’ll find out in two weeks.