It looks like a new biopic about Miss Cleo is about to be released, but I just finally watched the last one, Call Me Miss Cleo the other day. It was released by HBO Max back in 2022, but took me a few years to get to.
I had forgotten most of the story surrounding the very shady, at times criminal (or at least civilly actionable) Psychic Readers Network (PRN), but I never forgot Miss Cleo herself … or should I say the character Youree Dell Harris played called Miss Cleo.
And I remember the ads, and how confident Miss Cleo sounded as she (apparently) read for callers in her thick (apparently) Jamaican accent … not that I ever fully believed her. I had started reading cards myself a few years earlier and it felt as if she was doing something completely different than I was.
There was no personal development aspect, no reflections on archetypes, or concepts of spiritual growth, and certainly no nuanced perspectives on any situations being explored … Miss Cleo said it straight (apparently). She was sure who was messing with who, who was cheating, who was good, who thought what and when they thought it, and most importantly, she knew exactly how everything was (apparently) going to turn out.
As it actually turned out, Miss Cleo was just acting (at least in the ads), and PRN had a contract which gave them rights to her image and name (or the Miss Cleo name anyway). For all her notoriety, she didn’t make anything extra from them.
You can watch the film to see what happened to PRN and Youree Dell Harris. Long-story-short though (and a spoiler if you didn’t already know) … Miss Cleo moved on to be a private tarot/psychic reader, and a wedding officiant, she did some other acting work, had a podcast, and became a strong advocate for LGBTQ rights. And it looks like she maintained her Miss Cleo persona until her passing in 2016.
Miss Cleo is definitely a complicated character. On some levels, it seems clear she was a fraud, though I have little doubt that she was a good card reader. But I was also moved by her story, and found her both charismatic and sympathetic, I didn’t actually cry, but I was definitely tearing up towards the end of the film.
All in all, I recommend Call Me Miss Cleo. If you’re interested in this topic, and haven’t had a chance to see it already, take a look.