The Only Thing You Need to See from Mr. T's Documentary

As a child of the 1980s and 90s, I thought I knew everything there is to know about Mr. T. After watching Untold Mr. T: I Pity the Fool, it turns out I pretty much do know everything there is to know about Mr. T, at least where it concerns his public life. He was a bodyguard. He was in Rocky III. He starred in The A-Team, and he made a couple of bad movies (one of which, DC Cab, I adored as a child). Aside from a wrestling stint and a lot of appearances at fan conventions, that’s kind of it.

What’s remarkable is how Mr. T has transformed a fairly limited pop-culture footprint into iconic status. I’d wager there are very few people over the age of 30 (or even 25) who do not know who Mr. T is. He’s freakin’ Mr. T! Mohawk. Gold chains. “I pity the fool.”

He’s 74 now, and after a cancer battle, he doesn’t have the same physical stature he once did, but he seems every bit as formidable. He provides a lot of the interview footage in Pity the Fool, though he reportedly isn’t happy about the end product (he called it “garbage” because it didn’t go into his Christian faith as much as he wanted, and because he didn’t like the way his former agent characterized his post The A-Team career). But honestly, it’s a largely flattering depiction, and it’s hard to come away from what’s ultimately only a 48-minute documentary without an even better image of him.

There’s an interview he did with Letterman after Rocky III that I actually remember watching at the time. Letterman was being his patronizing self at the time, but Mr. T not only got the best of him then, but it’s aged even better for Mr. T in the intervening years. It says all you need to know about him, which is that he’s self-possessed, funny, and fully owns his identity. Based on the full documentary, very little has changed. Notwithstanding his involvement with Nancy Reagan’s Say No to Drugs campaign in the ’80s, Mr. T is the GOAT.