‘LuLaRich’ exposes how company founders recruit “members” into their mid-level marketing scheme through mind control, lies, and manipulation

The PBS documentary Belly of the Beast, which exposed eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons, won Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary honors. Showtime’s Kingdom of Silence, a look at journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s life, work, and murder, topped the Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary honors, while Netflix’s Athlete A, a study of the US Gymnastics scandal involving disgraced doctor Larry Nassar, came in as the Outstanding Investigative Documentary winner.

DeAnne Stidham is a Mormon mother of 14 with Barbie-blonde hair, studded designer stilettos, and a cozy Kris Jenner charm who, with her husband Mark, founded the billion-dollar company LuLaRoe. (You’ve probably seen their leggings, available in loud cat and pizza prints, peddled in your Facebook feed.)

DeAnne Stidham is a Mormon mother of 14 with Barbie-blonde hair, studded designer stilettos, and a cozy Kris Jenner charm who, with her husband Mark, founded the billion-dollar company LuLaRoe. (You’ve probably seen their leggings, available in loud cat and pizza prints, peddled in your Facebook feed.)

Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason had only been working for a few months on “LuLaRich,” their docuseries about the clothing company LuLaRoe — which operates as a multi-level marketing company, a.k.a. a pyramid scheme — when they learned the company’s co-founders, DeAnne and Mark Stidham, were willing to sit down with them.

It wasn’t until years after Kelli Dillon went into surgery while incarcerated in the California state prison system that she realized her reproductive capacity had been stripped away without her knowledge.

The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors on Tuesday announced this year’s nominees for entertainment, documentaries, news, podcast/radio, children’s & youth, public service and arts. A total of 60 nominees were revealed as representing “the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting and streaming media during 2020.”

When Kelli Dillon was 24 years old, a doctor at the California facility where she was incarcerated sterilized her without consent. That experience, and the way it galvanized Dillon to bring attention to this human rights violation anchors Erika Cohn’s timely and bracing new documentary “Belly of the Beast.

It is the same award won by The Boston Globe team in 2003 that inspired Participant’s Spotlight, which won the best picture Oscar in 2016. In addition to Participant, Blye Faust and Nicole Rocklin – who were among the producers on Spotlight – will produce Silver Seas alongside Cori Shepherd Stern (Open Heart).