Hulu Releases Trailer for God Forbid, Billy Corben's Doc on the Jerry Falwell Jr. Scandal

Back in summer 2020, Giancarlo Granda, the former Fountainebleau Miami Beach pool boy at the center of a years-long sex scandal involving evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. and Falwell's wife, Becki, contacted Miami filmmakers Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman to see if they'd be interested in telling his side of the story.

"We thought it was a compelling opportunity to not only examine the hypocrisy of his illicit affair with the first family of evangelicalism, but some of the even greater macro issues," Corben tells New Times. "Specifically, the rise of the Falwell's dynasty, their outsized influence on presidential politics, and how religious hucksters went from televangelism to higher education to the White House."

Granda's story and more will be the focus of the Hulu documentary God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty, coproduced by Corben and Spellman through their film production company Rakontur alongside Oscar-winner Adam McKay (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Big Short, and Vice) and Todd Schulman (producer of Who Is America with Sasha Baron Cohen). The official trailer for the project, directed by Corben, was released today by Hulu.

"What's important here is that nobody wants to kink shame the Falwells. We could care less about what it is that they're into. I mean, that's kind of what Miami is all about, right?" Corben says of the documentary. "This is about the hypocrisy."

Granda was reportedly 20 when he first met the Falwells while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau, a gig Corben says Granda took on for one year to put himself through school at Florida International University (FIU). Granda has said that he met the couple "multiple times per year” from 2012 to 2018 at hotels in Miami and New York City, as well as at the Falwells’ home in Virginia, to have sex with Becki Falwell while her husband "looked on."

In August 2020, Granda's account of his seven-year sexual relationship with Falwell and Becki was shared in a bombshell Reuters report. The story rocked the religious right. Falwell resigned as president of the conservative Liberty University hours after the article appeared online, and a years-long battle ensued between the trio, featuring accusations of predatory behavior and extortion.
The newly released trailer hints at some previously unearthed accusations by Granda against the Falwells, including that Falwell "liked to record his wife having sex with me."

"As a pool attendant, I would get hit on," Granda says in the opening of the trailer. "But if I would have known that accepting this woman's invitation to go back to her hotel room would have led to a scandal involving the president of the largest Christian university in the world and the president of the United States, I would have walked away and just enjoyed my private life."

Corben says he likes to describe the documentary as "Get Out meets The Righteous Gemstones."

"This kid from Westchester, you know, he meets the Falwells there, and then gets brought into this world of money, power, and privilege, and most importantly, this kind of evangelical subculture of America," Corben tells New Times. "It takes quite a few years, but he has that Get Out moment. I assure you."

The ménage à trois between Granda and the Falwells eventually fizzled, Granda has said, in part owing to an ugly business dispute involving a Miami Beach hostel. A Politico reporter who spent a weekend there in 2017 deemed it a "flophouse" that welcomed a laundry list of behaviors that would likely get students expelled from Liberty University, the Christian school founded by Falwell's father, noted televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr.

Despite all that's happened over the years — what Corben aptly refers to as "telenovela drama" — Granda still remains a partner in the company that owns the property of the former hostel at 810 Alton Rd. Records show that the property is owned by the company Alton Hostel LLC, which is owned by Granda and Jerry Falwell Jr.'s son.

God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty premieres November 1 on Hulu.