Netflix doc about Rob Ford tells story of ‘underdog’ mayor and his public struggles

Archive video from 2014: Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford fighting cancer after months of scandals. John Vennavally-Rao reports.

London native Shianne Brown still remembers her disbelief when she heard, half a world away, that Toronto mayor Rob Ford had been caught on video smoking crack cocaine.

“What the hell is happening in Toronto? That’s crazy,” the filmmaker recalls thinking when the news broke in 2013.

The late mayor quickly became an international spectacle, first for the bombshell allegation that he eventually admitted to, and then for the flaming rollercoaster of scandals that followed — which included allegations of public drunkenness and physically knocking over a city councillor.

More than a decade later, Brown is the director behind “Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem,” a new Netflix documentary chronicling Ford’s rise to power and his chaotic time in office.

The episode, out Tuesday, is part of the streamer’s “Trainwreck” anthology series, which, according to a logline, examines “some of the most disastrous events ever to blow up in mainstream media.”

“I wanted to really tap into the human being that is Rob Ford, not the political headline that is Rob Ford,” says Brown on a video call from London.

“There is a side of this story where you just go full force into the scandal, but that didn’t feel like it did the story justice or it did Rob Ford and his many supporters and his friends and family justice.”

Brown asked Ford’s brother, Ontario premier Doug Ford, to participate in the film but he “kindly declined.”

“It’s such a tragic story because of the way he died and you’ve really got to respect the family’s wishes, particularly with a project like this, where you’re going to tap into the scandals and the difficult side of the story,” says Brown. Ford died of cancer in 2016 at age 46.

The film weaves together archival footage and interviews — with local journalists including Robyn Doolittle and insiders from Ford’s circle, including his former driver Jerry Agyemang — to trace the populist wave that swept Ford into office in 2010 and the public unraveling that made him infamous.

Brown found Ford — who built a largely suburban base of voters with his tax-cutting, anti-establishment agenda — had a way of making the “disenfranchised feel emboldened.”

“He would often be the person who speaks to the cleaner, janitor, the people who keep our lives going but might not always get a thank you from everyone else.”

She says Ford’s rhetoric of standing up for “the people” against the “downtown elites” resonates today, speaking to a broader global shift in how power is won.

“It’s a story about the underdog. I think we’ve seen it in elections around the world,” she says, pointing to the Brexit referendum in the U.K. and Donald Trump’s first presidential election in the U.S., both of which many initially dismissed as unlikely outcomes.

“There’s a story of listening to everyone around you, not just in your echo chamber, and understanding what are the issues that are impacting everyone, not just your own microcosm… I think that’s something this story of Rob Ford brings in 2025 — this idea of, ‘Let’s listen to people who feel disenfranchised, marginalized and unheard.’”

While some politicians employ a “divide and conquer” approach, says Brown, “I felt Rob Ford wasn’t necessarily a person who had malicious, vindictive (intentions). He actually seemed like he was a man who wanted to help people, but half the city just didn’t agree with his politics.”

At the same time, says Brown, Ford was “quite antagonistic to people. He went after the media.”

The film captures Ford’s often hostile relationship with local reporters, showing him repeatedly lashing out at those he saw as adversaries.

“I think if he just admitted it (smoking crack) first up, that would have really helped his cause. The back and forth with the media, calling them liars — going up against an establishment as big as the media is pretty tough, and I think that’s partly where he’d gone wrong.”

Brown says that the deeper she dug into the story, the more she saw how frequently cameras captured Ford spiraling in a cycle of substance abuse. Viral videos of his bizarre public behaviour made him easy fodder for late-night American TV. He even appeared as a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” amid the crack scandal.

“This was a man battling addiction in an intensely public arena. It’s a disease. I really wanted it to come across that this was a man who was struggling and he had to confront the media every single day,” she says.

“If it were to happen today, would it be the same outcome? Would the media react in the same way? (Ford was in) a flash point in time where there weren’t conversations about mental health as widely as there are today.”

Brown hopes the film makes people consider the circumstances that culminated in the now-notorious crack video.

“You’ve got to think about where he was at that point in his life. How did he even get in that situation in the first place, with people that aren’t necessarily his friends? What led him to that moment?” she says.

“It’s not really for us to judge and obviously I’m telling this story, but I just hope it makes people think a bit differently about who he was and what happened to him.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2025.

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press