Janis Joplin was the definition of rock and roll during her Hollywood years as a celebrated singer. While she was at times criticized for her homosexuality and secret lesbian relationships, her music rose above the hate and turned her into an everlasting icon.
Now, REELZ’ new docuseries, Janis Joplin: It Happened Here, is showing fans an inside look into the legend’s mysterious life, and inviting a loving woman from her past, to tell all on her final days.
“I was attracted to Janice the night we met,” says Joplin’s ex-girlfriend, Jae Whitaker, in the new show teaser.“I didn’t even think of us getting together, but apparently, she was kind of persuasive to me — and so that night, when Janis kissed me, I said ‘Okay!’ You know? And she and I went home together that night.
“We kind of courted each other, Janice and I, for the next two weeks, and then she moved in with me.”
Whitaker then gives viewers a tour of San Francisco’s The Castro neighborhood—one of the first openly-gay communities in North America.
She points at the quaint apartment she and Janis Joplin shared on State Street in 1963.
48 years after the musician’s death, Whitaker still remembers their life together like it was yesterday—only now, she lives in a house across the street.
“Janis Joplin: It Happened Here” airs Wednesday June 20 at 9:00 ET / PT on REELZ.
