Brace yourselves, Primals. If you’ve spent any time scrolling through the wild west of online wellness, you’ve undoubtedly collided with the sheer, sun-beaten spectacle that is Brian Johnson, better known to his six million loyal followers as the Liver King. He’s the guy tearing raw animal organs apart with his teeth, gnawing bull testes like they’re a family pot roast, and generally embodying a modern-day Neanderthal on a mission to reclaim ancestral living. His stunts weren’t just for shock value; they were the foundation of a viral empire that, by 2021, reportedly boasted a supplements brand with a staggering $100 million annual turnover.
For years, Johnson peddled a potent cocktail of raw organ consumption, intense fitness challenges, and his “nine ancestral tenets,” promising anyone could achieve his ultra-ripped physique and robust health with just a few pills and a shift in lifestyle. The cornerstone of his entire persona, his sales pitch, his very being, was a single, repeated insistence: It—he—was 100% natural. Over and over again, he hammered this point home, building trust and selling a dream built on what he claimed was pure, unadulterated primal power.
But as is often the case in the dazzling, often deceptive world of online influence, the veneer eventually cracked. At the tail end of 2022, a bombshell dropped that threatened to burst his multimillion-dollar bubble. Leaked emails and blood tests revealed the jarring truth: the self-proclaimed natural king was, in fact, injecting steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) to the tune of $11,000 a month. This wasn’t just a minor inconsistency; it was a fundamental betrayal of the very premise his colossal brand was built upon, drawing the ire of everyone from dedicated fans to prominent figures like Joe Rogan.
In a world where health misinformation doesn’t just spread but can actively catapult its purveyors into stratospheric stardom and immense wealth, the consequences for such deception are often surprisingly brief. Brian Johnson’s story, from viral sensation to exposed liar and back into the spotlight, is now chronicled in a compelling installment of Netflix’s ongoing sports documentary anthology, *Untold*. Streaming beginning May 13, this 70-minute deep dive offers an unadulterated look at his journey, framed as his self-proclaimed underdog story and path to redemption.
Joe Pearlman, the director behind this Untold episode and previous films on subjects like Robbie Williams and the cast of Harry Potter, isn’t shy about acknowledging the Liver King’s undeniable talent. “I think he’s a marketing genius. I really do,” Pearlman states. “The guy just knows what an audience wants and how to sell stuff to an audience in every sense.” This sharp business acumen, coupled with a flair for the utterly outrageous, was clearly a potent combination in the attention economy.
At 48 years old, Johnson is a formidable figure, almost 200 pounds of Texan muscle and sinew, a physical testament to intense training, if not purely natural means. In the documentary, he traces his origin story back to a childhood in which he felt like a “runt” after losing his father when he was a toddler. Idolizing action heroes like Rambo and Conan the Barbarian, he found in working out an instant community and, crucially, a way to transform the physical appearance he felt was holding him back.
He speaks in the film about the transformative power of fitness, going so far as to claim his first – ever euphoric moment occurred on a bench press. While it is a remarkable assertion, it’s hard not to note the near-identical claim made by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1977’s Pumping Iron, raising questions about the originality or even veracity of parts of his carefully crafted narrative. Nonetheless, his tale of transformation, woven with the fabric of a caveman-inspired lifestyle, resonated deeply with audiences hungry for a compelling story.
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Adding another layer to his narrative was the backstory involving his sons, Rad and Stryker, who he claimed suffered from persistent poor health in their childhoods and were “weak.” Johnson presented the switch to an organ-heavy diet as the miracle cure for their ills. This personal story, centered around his family’s supposed health struggles and subsequent recovery through his methods, struck a chord, helping drive demand for his products.
The result? Some 25,000 people were reportedly buying his liver supplements each month. The financial success was immense. “I used to hate my f-cking life,” Johnson admits in the documentary, “and now I’ve made my fortune.” But it wasn’t just about the money; it was about the image, the lifestyle, and the brand becoming ever more entrenched in the digital landscape.
His huge ranch, adorned with guns and furs (even over his bed), and a gym so elaborate that even the dogs have their own treadmills, painted a picture of primal, extravagant success. His wife, Barbara (known online as the “Liver Queen”), and his now-teenage sons, posting as “Liver Boy Rad” and “Stryker the Barbarian,” actively participated in building the brand, sharing content like downing 15 daily raw egg yolks and calling it “disgusting, but very ancestral.
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Johnson became a ubiquitous presence, appearing on chart-leading podcasts hosted by figures like Logan Paul, Ethan Klein, and Bert Kreischer. He dominated social media feeds, his cartoon-like physique and bizarre antics capturing widespread attention, including that of director Joe Pearlman. As his star ascended, however, an inevitable question lingered, whispered at first, then shouted: could that exaggerated physique really be achieved without chemical assistance?
Prone to appearing shirtless, Johnson vehemently defended his “natty” status time and again. He openly trashed theories from skeptics like Joe Rogan, all while continuing to champion his “nine ancestral tenets” as the sole source of his multimillion-dollar, modern-day Neanderthal physique. These tenets seemed simple enough: sleep, eat, move, shield (avoiding excessive WiFi/EMF exposure), connect, cold, sun, fight (embracing challenges), and bond. The raw organ-chomping, despite carrying documented risks like hepatitis E and salmonella, was presented as proof; just look at him, he urged.
Then came the undeniable moment of truth. In November 2022, the leaked emails and blood tests, shared by a fitness YouTuber who had long accused him of steroid use, hit the internet. Facing irrefutable evidence, Johnson told the documentary crew, “There was no denying that, man. I knew he got me.” His wife, the Liver Queen, initially advised silence, a path Johnson agreed to, thinking, “Who cares… what kind of harm did I really do?”
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However, the sheer scale of the backlash and the evidence forced a rapid change of strategy. Within three days, he realized damage control was his only option. He posted a YouTube video, complete with his usual trademarks – opening with a call to his “Primals” and sitting on a throne – in which he finally admitted that he had lied about his steroid and HGH use. The carefully constructed natural persona crumbled publicly.
“I never expected this exposure in the public eye, and it’s been tricky to navigate,” he said in the confession, a quote also featured in the documentary. The film offers insights into the performance behind the persona, with Johnson admitting to filming segments a hundred times over for the perfect shot and leaving videos replaying on loop to inflate viewing figures. He attempted to reframe his entire reason for being as simply “an experiment to spread the message” about young men’s mental health, linking it to his own journey through fitness. His sign-off in the video was a promise: “I will be better starting immediately.”
What followed the confession was a retreat from his relentless social media presence and a significant legal challenge: a $25 million lawsuit from customers accusing him of fraud and deception, essentially for selling a lifestyle and supplements based on a lie about how his physique was achieved. While the case was ultimately dropped in 2023, the damage to his credibility was profound.
Three years on from the initial exposure, a central question remains: is he truly sorry, or is the remorse another performance? Director Joe Pearlman offers a fascinating perspective based on his interactions with Johnson while filming the documentary. On their first meeting at his ranch last year, Pearlman found him to be “the man I saw online. It was full on, it was performative, it was outrageous,” telling TIME that they were “constantly on our toes with what was going to happen next.”
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The stunts performed by the film crew mirrored his online persona, including running after a bull with his family, killing it, and ripping out its organs to eat, and pulling a truck with a chain around his waist – a feat revealed to have been assisted by his team pushing from behind. It was the full Liver King experience, curated and amplified for the cameras.
However, by the second of the crew’s three trips, Pearlman observed a shift. “He started to reveal a different side to him, a side that I don’t think we’d seen before.” Pearlman, 37, speculates that the on-camera remorse, while perhaps serving to preserve his business, might stem from something more fundamental: “He just wants to be liked. He wants to be loved, he wants attention. He craves it.” This craving for validation potentially drove both the extreme stunts and the extreme deception.
Around three-quarters of the way through shooting, Pearlman says it became clear that “he was looking for some sort of reinvention.” Whether he fully delivered that reinvention or whether Pearlman allowed it to be presented onscreen is “a different conversation,” but the intention for change, at least in his narrative, seemed present.
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This brings us to the unspoken tension at the heart of Untold: The Liver King: Why dedicate significant screen time and a platform to an admitted liar whose spurious health claims could have potentially harmed millions? Pearlman addresses this directly, framing the documentary not as an endorsement but as a cautionary tale. “As far as I’m concerned, as a documentary-maker, I made a cautionary tale about what can and can’t happen to someone who is enigmatically selling ideas that people want to buy into. That’s dangerous,” he asserts, adding starkly, “There’s a big warning sign on this film saying, ‘Do not follow the people who talk like this.’”
Pearlman believes Johnson’s own bombast, bizarre actions, and self-incriminating statements in the film are sufficient warning without the documentary needing to explicitly condemn him at every turn. Yet, the reality remains that Johnson’s posts, built on a foundation of deception, made him rich. The young men he claims he wants to help are precisely those most vulnerable to consuming online misinformation as gospel truth.
A European Parliament Youth Survey published last year highlighted this risk, showing that a staggering 42% of 16-30-year-olds got their news from social media, with a disturbing 76% encountering misleading information online within just one week of the study. While those who grew up before the social media age might more easily dismiss claims like eating raw testicles for health or avoiding WiFi for hormonal balance, many fear that younger generations are increasingly susceptible to being sucked into such narratives, especially when packaged with charisma, physical results (however achieved), and promises of transformation.
Towards the end of the film, Johnson muses on the path forward. “How do I repent?,” he asks. “I don’t know what comes next. I don’t have the answer to that yet.” But apparently, six months later, inspiration struck. He announces plans to open precisely 302 retreats espousing his version of ancestral living. The ambition remains colossal, even after the fall from grace.
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There are more mea culpas offered by the film’s conclusion. “I want the world to know that I was wrong… I got all of it wrong,” he says, sandwiched between thanking a homegrown strawberry for nourishment and simulating a baptism. It’s a moment intended to signal profound change, but it’s difficult to watch with anything less than deep skepticism, particularly given that only minutes earlier, Johnson admitted to a criminal past that included illegally printing money and international drug trading.
Pearlman notes that “there were a lot more things that didn’t make the cut,” regarding Johnson’s confessions. It’s a crying shame that so many of these late – documentary revelations about a criminal past go seemingly without proper interrogation within the film itself. Instead, the viewer is largely left with Brian Johnson acting as the unreliable narrator of his own curated fairytale, albeit one punctuated by the undeniable facts of steroid use and massive profit.
“Ninety-nine percent of the truth is what I would suggest to you that I’ve shared,” he insists in Untold. Coming from a man who built a multi-million-dollar brand on a foundational lie, and who admits to past criminal activities, these words land with the distinct, metallic taste of more raw bull than his infamous testicle dinners. The Liver King saga isn’t just about one man’s deception; it’s a visceral, unsettling illustration of the lengths people will go for fame and fortune in the attention economy, and a stark reminder of the critical need for skepticism in the face of online gurus selling extreme, and potentially harmful, ideas packaged as absolute truth.
Related posts:
Untold: The Liver King Lets the Disgraced Health Influencer Off Easy
Where is the Liver King now? Here’s what happened after the organ-eating influencer’s steroid scandal
Was the Liver King ever real? Netflix’s Untold digs into the man behind the myth
