The important things first: Girl, you know it’s truee is not the cinematic equivalent of Milli Vanilli. That said, this biopic, which hits streaming and some theaters starting Friday, isn’t just a parroting and reeling off of lyrics; it tells the story of one of pop music’s most infamous chapters. It’s actually more compelling than any Milli Vanilli biopic has any right to be (and currently has a 92 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

Part of the credit certainly goes to producer Fab Morvan, one half of the telegenic duo that rose to fame in 1989 with dancefloor smashes like “Girl You Know It’s True” and “Blame It on the Rain,” and who knows this story better than anyone.

The problem, of course, was that neither Morvan nor his best friend Rob Pilatus sang on these songs. The songs were produced by German disco expert Frank Farian and performed by American session singers in Munich.

Just as quickly as they conquered the charts came the downfall of Pilatus and Morvan, culminating in a hugely embarrassing win for Best New Artist at the 1990 Grammys (well, at least Little Richard seemed happy for them) and a press conference a few days later where they confessed everything and presented their trophies.

Pilatus continued to battle his addiction and died of an accidental overdose in 1998. But Morvan, 58, fought on. Today he lives with his family in Amsterdam and has fully embraced his connection to Milli Vanilli. He spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about coming to terms with one of Hollywood’s most cautionary tales.

Hi, Fab. You look exactly the same.

I take care of myself and I have music to thank for that. It saved my life. At first, I found it very difficult to want to do that. After everything I’ve been through, why should I do that? But then a voice said: “Just do it. There’s no way you can separate yourself from Milli Vanilli. You are Milli Vanilli.”

Do you play songs by Milli Vanilli?

Day by day. I started working with John Davis, one of the original singers of Milli. (Davis died in 2021 from complications of COVID-19.) Then I got a musical director, a band, backing singers, and rehearsals. Before you knew it, I was touring Europe doing festivals. Right now I’m super excited because the film is coming out and people can finally follow in Rob and Fab’s footsteps and understand that we didn’t orchestrate everything ourselves.

What happened to investigative journalism? What happened to the oath to investigate every single person? That didn’t happen. Why? Because Arista, Clive Davis and the music industry moguls wouldn’t allow it. They were too powerful. So if you stood up to those people, you might never work in this city again. That’s what happened to me. I was blacklisted. They made over $300 million with Milli Vanilli in just two years.

How much money did you and Rob make with Milli Vanilli?

Compared to what they made? Nothing. That’s what I’m going to say. Because in the end, I didn’t get paid. I tried to sue Frank and I got nothing. By the way, to this day, I don’t get a dime from anything you see on YouTube. Not a dime from the 240 million YouTube views of “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” or the 180 million views of “Girl You Know It’s True.”

You never received a percentage of record sales?

Nobody. Maybe for the first six months. When we signed these contracts, there was no lawyer or management to look after us.

The film succeeds in making you and Rob likeable. Their friendship is very touching – and lasted until his death.

When I came to Germany, I didn’t speak German very well. So Rob was like my shield. He protected me. People took advantage of me. I was doing shows for 200 euros and because I didn’t speak German very well, the owner tried to pay 50. Rob was like, “We’re not doing that.” He stood behind me and as we got older, he was my big brother because he was two years older than me.

As we grew into Milli Vanilli, Rob was the mouthpiece. And so Rob had to actually speak those lies. He was also adopted. He lived in an orphanage. Psychologically, things were happening to him that weren’t happening to me. He wanted to be loved. When love started to disappear, the emptiness in his heart opened up again. He started taking more drugs because he was completely disillusioned. It got so bad that Rob once threatened to kill himself by jumping off a balcony at the Mondrian Hotel. It was a cry for help.

There are a lot of drugs in the film. Did you also get into drug use?

I did. But it affected my performance, so I thought, “No, I don’t want to do that.” As a young guy, I was an athlete, so I thought, this is not good. I want to do my best. I was happiest when I was on stage.

Your look was a visual eye-catcher, especially the shoulder pads. It’s as if you were two triangles on stage. Whose idea was that?

I grew up in France, so I’ve always looked at fashion. And there was a guy called Klaus Nomi, a German opera singer, who wore these structured jackets. I thought, wow, that looks cool. So we had shoulder pads in the jackets, but we asked to make them bigger. And it was like, oh, that looks cool. That’s the vibe. And then we had the hair. We did everything in the styling. It was all our business.

There’s a scene in the movie where you look at a bulletin board with various rock stars. And you say to Rob, “What do you see? They all have a distinctive hairstyle.” And then you see the long hair. Did that really happen?

It’s a poetic license. The real story is that we were hanging out around Christmas and we watched a BBC documentary with the biggest pop stars. It was about fame. And then we noticed that Marilyn Monroe had a signature hairstyle. I know the Beatles because of the hairstyle. I know Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley and so on. John Travolta in the film Fat. So we went and got our hair braided. And within two weeks, man, the other guys in the clubs were jealous, of course, but the girls were like, “I love it. It looks good on you.” We had a blast doing it.

Were those hair extensions or was it your real hair?

They were hair extensions. Later in life, I shaved my head. I ran away from Milli Vanilli. But when I started singing the songs again, I thought, yeah, maybe that would be cool. So I grew out these dredlocks. But this time, I’m not wearing anything artificial in them.

How did you learn playback? Because you did it very, very well.

You know how that came about? When Frank gave us “Girl You Know It’s True,” Rob said, “You do the rap. I’ll do the chorus.” So we split it up and stuck with it. I’m the rapper, Rob was the urban guy. The rap was a lot of work. My goal was to master it because I didn’t want to get caught with my pants down.

Did you ever reconcile or talk to Frank after Milli Vanilli imploded?

No. I made it my task to forgive Frank internally and to free myself of negative thoughts. They were hindering me and my energy. After that, I was able to express myself much better.

He’s not a good guy, is he? I mean, he never took responsibility for what he created or what happened.

Never. He never did. He never apologized. Nobody did. Nobody at the label ever apologized either. They took the money. Even when the label executives are interviewed today, it’s so hard for them to say the words, “Yes, we knew. Everyone knew.” They just can’t say it because they’re still loyal to the old regime.

So Clive Davis knew it too?

Of course. When we came to America and opened our mouths, we knew how people would look at us. They would look twice. “You don’t sound anywhere near what we expected.” I knew that look. So every manager knew it, and Clive Davis knew it too, of course, but they thought, hey, this is going to sell like hotcakes.

I remember going to an awards show and we got in the limo with the radio people and the lead actor said, “Man, we don’t have to do anything with you guys. It’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it. You guys are unbelievable. We don’t have to do anything!” I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I get it now. You had to really push a record to get it to take off back then. But Milli Vanilli was really, really hot. (Davis did not respond to a request for comment.)

They were not the only dance band from Europe to get caught up in a lip-sync scandal. In Black Box (“Strike It Up”), a female model sang playback along to Martha Wash’s vocals.

What happened in Europe was that we didn’t speak English very well, but the producers had their eye on the American market. So how did you get into the American market? You got good-looking European people together. Then you got an American or English singer who was retired or who didn’t look any different. You put it together and boom. Because there was no Auto-Tune back then. After us came Mary J. Blige and Boys II Men – all kinds of groups that were told, “If you want a record deal, you have to sing. None of this playback nonsense.” Now you have AI, you have Auto-Tune and it goes back to, “Don’t worry about singing. We have all kinds of software.”

What memories do you have of your trip from Munich to LA?

Oh man, listen — at the Bar Marmont and the Roxbury, those two places, I ran into everybody. We’re talking about Axl Rose, we’re talking about Rod Stewart. It was incredible. David Lee Roth was like, “Yo man, I like the way you move, man.” I actually copied one of our moves from Van Halen videos when he threw his leg up. We hung out with Sam Kinison. Oh my God, Sam Kinison was so cool at the China Club. It was nothing but love. I’m sure they knew what was going on, but they were like, “That’s the industry.” I mean, what can you say? We all knew we were just pawns in the machine. “Good luck and I wish you the best and hope you make it out of this alive.”

Remember, The Arsenio Hall Show? I remember him talking shit about Milli Vanilli.

Yes, he was talking shit. He let the cat out of the bag. In vibrant color did the same thing. And then Arsenio gave us a chance. He said, “We’re going to promote you for 30 days. At the end of the 30 days, we want to see what you can do.” He brought us in for an interview and a live singing performance. And we rocked it. Personally, I was the one. Rob wasn’t feeling well at the time. And he was like, “Why would we do this?” And I was like, “Yo, we have to do this. We’ve been working on all these songs. We made the album. Let’s prove it to the world.” That episode was one of the highest-rated shows for Arsenio.