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In the mid-1970s Andy Warhol began keeping a diary–of sorts. It started out as a dry accounting of expenses–a tube of paint here, a quart of milk there—dictated to his collaborator Pat Hackett. But over time the entries shifted from the strictly mundane to something deeper and more personal.

“I’ve got these desperate feelings,” he noted in a 1981 entry, for instance, “that nothing means anything.”

Andy Warhol’s diaries were published posthumously in 1989, Hackett having edited the raw 20,000 pages to a more manageable, if not inconsiderable, 807. But it was not until this year that The Andy Warhol Diaries were transformed into a documentary series for Netflix, and an acclaimed one at that. It has earned four Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and individual recognition for Andrew Rossi for writing and directing the series.

“The diaries when they were published were seen as...

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In Netflix’s docuseries The Andy Warhol Diaries, writer-director Andrew Rossi peels away the layers of an artist who had an indelible influence on American culture. Turning to the writings by Warhol that were published in 1989 by his collaborator and friend Pat Hackett (to whom Warhol dictated his diaries from the mid-1970s to his death in 1987), Rossi sought to find the human being behind the public persona of pop artist, celebrity and provocateur. The series uses Warhol’s own words — and a version of his voice, with the help of AI technology and readings from actor Bill Irwin, as narration — to offer a side of Warhol little seen (or heard) outside his circle of collaborators, employees, superstars and hangers-on at the famed Factory in New York.

Rossi also turned to the scholarship of Jessica Beck, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum...

Andrew Rossi has been fascinated by Andy Warhol since childhood, which may explain why the director (“Page One: Inside The Times” “The First Monday in May” “Ivory Tower”) spent the last decade working on “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” a six-part docuseries that draws upon the artist’s posthumously published diaries of the same name. Dictated over the phone to Pat Hackett from 1976 to 1987, the diaries were published in 1989, two years after Warhol’s death. In the documentary, Rossi weaves together Warhol narration, created by artificial intelligence, with archival footage and sit-down interviews with the likes of John Water and Rob Lowe. The Ryan Murphy-produced Netflix docuseries, debuting on March 9, traces Warhol’s journey through eras as an artist, film director, publisher, TV producer, band manager, scene maker and celebrity.

Rossi spoke with Variety about the project, and his desire to puncture the myth of Warhol as “a neutered alien under a white wig.

In the new documentary series “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” the late pop artist’s re-created voice sounds eerie and uncanny — human but not. It’s aesthetically jarring, and a fitting tribute.

Director Andrew Rossi, with the permission of Warhol’s estate, used an artificial-intelligence program to reproduce his speaking voice, so that “Warhol” can read aloud from the diaries he kept. The result is a flat, almost robotic recapitulation of observations and events, narrating a vivid stream of footage from his life and career without emotion or intonation. “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” executive produced by Ryan Murphy, builds, over six well-structured episodes, a sense of its subject as intelligent, but alienated from his feelings and even from his own talent.

Warhol reigned in a 1970s and ’80s milieu in which all kinds of personalities rubbed up against each other and the divisions between high and low culture were collapsing. His...

Face value has never had a more accurate appraisal than the accumulated works of Andy Warhol. Early in The Andy Warhol Diaries, the artist at the center shows his colors. “If you didn’t have fantasies, you wouldn’t have problems,” Warhol says. The mask he wore never covered the mascara he always felt he needed. Warhol didn’t like his skin, the shape of his nose, his receding hairline, or his asexual façade. He says he’d always wanted to be a robot, unemotional, detached, and ageless. The six-part documentary gives him that, but infuses the machine with affection.

The main narrator of The Andy Warhol Diaries is Andy, but not. Along with layered readings by Bill Irwin, Andy’s words are translated by a Warhol-bot, an artificially intelligent vocal algorithm machine which inadvertently highlights how much the art celebrity would have enjoyed the current age of everyday stardom.

Another week, another overwhelming amount of new TV. From ripped-from-the-headlines accounts of the Los Angeles Lakers and suburban murders (not in the same show), to a documentary on Andy Warhol, to new movies from Pixar and Ryan Reynolds, plus a new Weeknd concert special and an intriguing mystery starring Samuel L. Jackson and Walton Goggins (Baby Billy himself), this week really does have everything.

Without further ado (because honestly we can’t spare another minute), on with the television!

HBO

“Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”

Sunday, March 6 at 9 p.m., HBO

Your next based-on-a-true-story obsession is here. “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” is based on Jeff Pearlman’s nonfiction book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s,” which charted the immortal franchise during its heyday with Magic Johnson (who is currently very annoyed at this new show and...

A new documentary, The Andy Warhol Diaries, will reexamine the life of the 20th century’s most famous artist through the lens of his own letters.

Filmmaker Andrew Rossi used AI software to recreate Warhol’s voice to read entries from the artist’s posthumously published 1989 memoir, also titled The Andy Warhol Diaries. Rob Lowe, Julian Schnabel, John Waters, Fab Five Freddy, and the book’s editor, Pat Hackett, all provide commentary throughout the picture, which will arrive on Netflix March 9.

A trailer for the six-part, Ryan Murphy–produced doc...

Executive producer Ryan Murphy takes Andy Warhol enthusiasts and neophytes alike into a melancholy immersion of the man’s life and work — using his own words and voice reconstructed with artificial intelligence — in “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Directed by Andrew Rossi (“Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times” and “The First Monday in May”), the six-part documentary series debuts March 9. Watch the official trailer below.

While Warhol was seemingly scrupulous about keeping his private life private — often flippantly telling journalists he was “asexual” — there’s plenty beneath the surface of his groundbreaking 20th-century art to suggest otherwise. That’s one of the achievements of “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” which melds talking-head testimonies from those who knew him with impressionistic montages of his work and archival snippets from his New York scene at the Factory. There’s plenty of the salacious here, from Warhol’s brushes with drugs, his...

Andy Warhol by Marie Menken. Competed 1965.

Marie Menken made several films inspired by and starring artists she knew, such as Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945) and Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961). According to Warhol’s memoir Popism: The Warhol Sixties (written with Pat Hackett), in 1963 Warhol was brought by his friend Charles Henri Ford to a party hosted by Menken and her husband Willard Maas at the couple’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Warhol and Menken hit it off immediately and he would go on to cast her as an actress in his films, such as Chelsea Girls and The Life of Juanita Castro.

Close to the same time, Warhol was also introduced to Gerard Malanga, who would become Warhol’s main art assistant throughout the ’60s and who is featured prominently in this short film. In Popism, Warhol describes Menken and Maas as “sort of godparents” to Malanga.

Andy Warhol presents...

Obnoxious drag queens, sleepy hustlers, washed-up starlets, effeminate vampires, and sickly junkies were among the miscreants and lowlifes that inhabited a series of films made in the 60’s and 70’s under the banner of the Andy Warhol “Factory” label. Though the eccentric artist himself had virtually no creative input, Andy Warhol’S Flesh (1968), Andy Warhol’S Trash (1970), and Andy Warhol’S Heat (1972) though low-budget and mostly improvised, were milestones in underground independent cinema. The final film made under the Warhol banner was 1977’s Andy Warhol’S Bad, one of the most shocking black comedies of the 1970’s. Andy Warhol’S Bad differs from the earlier Warhol films because of its higher production values (a 1.5 million dollar budget) and studio-friendly casting, but retains its sense of underground cred thanks to a demented script by Pat Hackett and George Abagnalo that breaks many taboos of the time to create a hilarious deadpan satire.