“I had a number of people say to me how brave I was. This is not a matter of being brave. This is a matter of necessity,” says Kellie Maloney in Deadline’s exclusive trailer for “Knock Out Blonde.” The five-part doc series is an intimate portrait of the transgender boxing promoter and revisits the years prior to her transition.
Maloney was, by her own account, “obsessed with success.” She managed Lennox Lewis on his road to becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. “The whole time, I wanted to kill myself. My whole life, I dreamt of being a woman,” she reveals. “I was born in the wrong body.”
The project explores the toll that “living in fear” took on Maloney. “I just wanted to end it, and I just started taking every pill that I could find,” she recalls.
“I am proud of who I am and that I have been able to stop living a lie by being true to myself and family,” Maloney said in a statement. ” I hope this documentary helps people to understand and see others not as freaks or dysfunctional individuals but that we’re all members of the human race. I hope that people that watch this film will learn from my story to respect one another.”
Currently in post-production, “Knock Out Blonde” will be “ready for release later this year,” according to Deadline.
