A new film explores child star Gary Coleman’s tough life — and his death in Utah

In tracking down the life story of the former child actor Gary Coleman, British filmmaker Robin Dashwood visited Santaquin, Utah, last fall.

“You can’t get further away from Hollywood,” Dashwood said of the Utah County town where the “Diff’rent Strokes” star lived for the last five years of his life.

“He was very suspicious of people by that point, and that’s part of the reason he wanted to move to Utah,” Dashwood said in a phone interview last week. “He found he wasn’t treated like Gary, the Hollywood star, in Utah. He was treated as himself.”

Dashwood has directed a documentary, “Gary,” which chronicles Coleman’s career as a child star, his battles with his failing kidneys and with the people entrusted to handle his money, and the tumultuous relationship with a young Utah woman with whom he lived before his death in 2010. The movie is scheduled to be available for streaming starting Thursday on Peacock.

Coleman had come to Utah in 2005 to act in “Church Ball,” a sports comedy by the makers of such Latter-day Saint-themed movies as “The Singles Ward.” During filming, Coleman met a 19-year-old Utah woman named Shannon Price. Shortly after Coleman bought a house in Santaquin, Price moved in. In 2007, the two were married on a Nevada mountaintop. A year later, they were divorced, though she continued to live in the house until his death.

Dashwood’s movie opens with the headlines announcing Coleman’s death, in a Provo hospital on May 28, 2010. The introduction includes the 911 call Price made two days earlier, when Coleman had fallen and suffered a head wound — causing so much blood, Price told the 911 operator, that she couldn’t handle it.

After that prologue, the movie tells Coleman’s life story in chronological order: Born in Zion, Illinois, Coleman appeared in a children’s fashion show at age 7 and drew the attention of Victor Perillo, a talent agent in Chicago. Perillo gets Coleman a job in a TV ad for a local bank.

By the time he was 10, Coleman and his parents were in Los Angeles, and he was getting roles. After a guest spot on the sitcom “Good Times,” produced by Normal Lear, Coleman was was in Lear’s next project — “Diff’rent Strokes,” as one of two brothers from Harlem (the other brother was played by Todd Bridges) adopted by a rich businessman (Conrad Bain) on Park Avenue.

“As a child, I remember watching him on ‘Diff’rent Strokes,’” Dashwood said. “I thought he was great, as most people did.”

The show was a hit when it debuted in 1978, and Coleman’s catchphrase, “Whachoo talkin’ about, Willis?,” became ubiquitous — so much so that Coleman, as an adult, grew to hate it, according to people interviewed in “Gary.”

What Dashwood didn’t know was what happened to Coleman in the years after the series was canceled in 1986.

“What happened to him subsequently wasn’t really covered over here in Europe,” Dashwood said. “So we knew nothing about his health issues, or the court case with his parents, or the relationship with Shannon. We heard that he died, and that was about it.”

That distance, Dashwood said, helped him as he started making the documentary.

“As soon as you look online, obviously, you’re hit by the kind of tidal wave of, you know, something dodgy happened to him at the end,” Dashwood said. “I didn’t have any preconceptions about the story, because I hadn’t heard much about it, so [I] could come to it with fresh eyes.”

Most of the people who were in Coleman’s orbit who are still alive eventually agreed to be interviewed, Dashwood said — though some were easier to get than others. (The most notable person who never responded to inquiries, he said, was pop star Janet Jackson, who as a teen appeared on a handful of episodes of “Diff’rent Strokes.”)

Perillo, Coleman’s original agent, was one of the first subjects to agree — and through Perillo, Dashwood gained access to Coleman’s parents, Sue and Willie, “who are very suspicious about doing any kind of press.” In 1989, a 21-year-old Gary Coleman sued his parents and his business adviser, Anita DeThomas (who died in 2006), accusing them of mishandling the money he made as a child actor.

In the documentary, Sue and Willie Coleman maintain that they were acting in their son’s best interests. “They don’t think they did anything wrong,” Dashwood said.

Bridges, Coleman’s TV brother, also came on board quickly, Dashwood said. One of the movie’s more touching scenes shows Bridges walking the now-empty soundstage where “Diff’rent Strokes” was shot.

Convincing Price to sit for an interview took some time, Dashwood said. “I think she feels hard done by the press in the past, and obviously she’s very much aware of all the online social-media chatter that there’s been around her,” he said. “We managed to persuade her that she really needed to tell her side of the story, because otherwise other people would be speaking on her behalf, or accusing her of this, that and the other. She understood that, and I think she was happy to take part in the end.”

The documentary takes a neutral position with its interview subjects. “Because of the way I decided to make it, which was to have them talking to the camera, they’re talking directly to the audience,” Dashwood said. “That’s almost like a confessional. They tell you what they think and feel. My job was to present the evidence, present their testimony in as balanced a way as I could, then leave it to the audience to decide.”

Though the movie takes no sides, Dashwood acknowledged he has reached one conclusion while making the movie: He said he believes Price when she says she didn’t have anything to do with Coleman’s death.

“It’s fairly clear that she didn’t. There’s no evidence that she did. The police were very clear. They investigated and they could find no evidence for foul play,” he said. Price acknowledges in the film, Dashwood said, that “they had a complicated emotional relationship and physical relationship.”

In making a film about an actor who was exploited by the people around him, Dashwood said, “I hope we avoid being exploitative by not turning it into a highly dramatic, slightly trashy thing. We lay out the case, and let everybody speak and present the facts.”

Dashwood said he hopes viewers see “Gary” and are “reminded what a great talent he was, and I hope that they’ll feel rather moved by the many challenges that he had. … It’s a very tragic story, but hopefully an inspiring one at the same time.”