In a 2023 interview with Smooth Radio,
Chris Smith spoke about the unexpected way archive material was found and how it shaped the film: "The biggest surprise during the process was realizing that
Andrew Ridgeley's mother had these scrapbooks. Those ended up, I think there were 50 in total and were this incredible document that sort of charted the rise and the ultimate conclusion of
Wham!.
To have those as a guide that we were able to come back to time and time and time again as a narrative device was such an incredible break. And then in terms of the actual archive, the process, it wasn't like we collected everything and then we cut the movie.
It was ongoing throughout the entire process. And we had heard that there was this fabled footage that existed from the Club Fantastic tour. And I don't think we found that until like a couple of weeks before we finished. It was something that somebody knew someone who knew someone who had a copy of VHS tape on their shelf.
It's much more happenstance than I think people would assume. I think that people would assume that this all exists in one centralized location in
George Michael's estate. Andrew had a lot of it, but there were a lot of things that were just sort of floating out there that we were fortunately able to find and pull in."