'Call Me Ted': Jane Fonda, John Malone and others explore Ted Turner's life as a 'life and death adventure'

Founder of CNN, a National Sailing Hall of Fame sailer, philanthropist and Jane Fonda's ex-husband, producer Joni Levin, and writer and director Keith Clarke, go deep into the life of Ted Turner in the Max docuseries Call Me Ted. Featuring interviews with Turner's children, Fonda, John Malone, Christiane Amanpour, Alan Horn and more, the six-part series is an exciting look at Turner's life, going right back to his childhood.

"This is a drama. It has cliffhangers. Ted's life is just one big life and death adventure, literally. ... If I wrote this as a fiction, I promise you, you wouldn't believe it," Clarke told Yahoo Canada. "I came from that point of view. I knew that all of the accomplishments were going to be taken care of."

Levin first met Turner in the 1980s, when he purchased her first documentary on John Huston, and worked together many times after that.

"I just always was so taken and inspired by who he was as a human being, which most people really don't know," Levin said. "He was always that underdog."

"When I thought about this seven years ago I thought, it's not just his accomplishments, but it's also the shadows and the obstacles that he had to overcome to become the man he is today."

After eight months of calling Turner's office to take a step forward with this documentary idea, she finally met with him and explained what she wanted to do. Ultimately, he gave the docuseries his seal of approval.

"He had no editorial say over it," Levin said. "His people that have been working with him for 30 plus years, literally his right arms, they were incredibly helpful in opening up all the archives for us, allowing us to get what we needed, leading us to where all the bodies are buried, so to speak, and just opening up a lot of doors."

'Ted basically abandoned his kids'

Call Me Ted is executed with a chronological approach to its storytelling, beginning with Turner's childhood, which was significantly shaped by his father, who was "tough" on him.

"We basically begin when Ted is born and you follow that relationship with his father," Clarke highlighted. "It's important that you anchor that relationship and it's not a throwaway, because that impacts Ted for the rest of his life. Every decision Ted makes has a touchstone back to his father somehow, and it's with his relationships with his kids, with his business, ... with Jane [Fonda]."

"As Ted says, he was abandoned when he was four years old. His father joined the the Navy, took the rest of the family to where he was going to be based, and told his wife, basically, [Ted] needs to toughen up, and send him to a boarding school," Levin added. "So Ted didn't understand at that early age why. Why am I being left? ... He was also physically and verbally abused, and so he says to this day, 'I have abandonment issues,' and those issues are so deep."

As we learn in the docuseries, his father figure becomes the late Jimmy Brown, who worked for Turner's father, which included looking after his sailboat.

"What's more astonishing is that Jimmy took care of Ted, helped him grow up, got him through all of his pains and agony," Clarke said.

Turner's father died by suicide in 1963, and Brown was there on that day.

As we learn from Turner's children in the docuseries, when their father was frequently away sailing or working, Brown became their father figure as well.

"Jimmy raised Ted's kids and Ted's grandkids. In a way that we would look at it, Ted basically abandoned his kids," Clarke said. "You're almost always hoping, 'Oh, Ted's going to get it. He's going to spend time with his kids.' He doesn't."

"Ted had three things in his life, ... business, sailing and family, and most of the time sailing and business took first place. And we have all this beautiful footage of Ted just admitting, 'I wasn't there for my kids.' But because of Jimmy Brown, Jimmy Brown was that foundation. And it's astonishing how the kids just say, 'If we didn't have Jimmy Brown we wouldn't be a family.'"

"You see Ted as a selfish man, but then he does become almost selfless," Levin added. "He has those realizations of, ... at the end of the day, what is important, and it is family."

Jane Fonda describes first date with Ted Turner: 'He was devouring me'

What's achieved to great success in Call Me Ted is hearing everyone speak particularly candidly about their relationship with Turner.

"He was so candid [in his autobiography] about his flaws and his pain, and I thought, OK this is not a puff piece. I think I know how to get into this," Clarke said. "Having told Ted, we're going to use this as the basis, ... every time we did an interview, ... to be able to hold up the book and say, 'Ted has told me we can go to these areas,' which was true, that gave them permission."

"Everyone that we sat down with, ... they all thought it was going to be generic. ... Jane was just going to hit the high points and I had to stop her. I said, 'Jane, we're not going there. This is where we're going.' ... Then they just opened up."

Fonda really provides the series with a detailed look at her romance with Turner, the highs and lows, and how their marriage ultimately came to an end.

When she went on her first date with Turner, she hadn't been on a first date with someone in 18 years.

"He was devouring me," Fonda describes in Call Me Ted. "It was the most fabulous feeling of, it was beyond appreciation, he just ate me up with his eyes."

As she recalls, Turner also told her that his father didn't raise him to have a lot of respect for women, but they bonded over having complicated relationships with their fathers, and both having a parent who died by suicide.

While Fonda points out his infidelity at the beginning of their relationship, ultimately "different priorities" led to the end of their marriage, but Clarke still described them as "soulmates."

"They are each other's soulmates, it just was never going to work," Clarke said. She was at the 85th birthday, ... she's still with the kids. She embraced Ted's grandkids as her own."

'He's never backed down'

In 2018, Turner revealed that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, the same diagnosis of the late Robin Williams, which is a connection made at the end of Call Me Ted.

But it's his determination and persistence throughout every year of his life, into his 80s, that holds true about the celebrated entrepreneur, philanthropist and producer.

"He has good days, bad days, but he was still involved," Clarke said.

"Ted has seen the whole show and as he said he loves it, but there were times it was really hard for him to to watch," Levin added. "There was a lot of emotional stuff, places that we went that he allowed, to his credit. But at the end of the day, he felt that it was really honest and really authentic and accurate."

"He has strong will and he's not going to back down, because he's never backed down."