Anna Nicole Smith's Rocky Relationship With Her Mom Virgie Mae Hogan

It's no secret that Anna Nicole Smith (born Vicky Lynn Hogan) led a life filled with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows — and most of which while under the glare of the bright lights of Hollywood. Alas, a brand new Netflix documentary aptly titled "Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me" makes the case that the public never really knew the star at all, and it appears Smith's mother, Virgie Mae Hogan, would agree. "She was very young, very beautiful, and very funny when she was Vickie Lynn. People won't know her as Vickie Lynn like we do. Her family knows her because they were raised with her," Hogan recalled to the Daily Mail about her late daughter in February 2017. "Other people don't, they just know her as Anna Nicole," she lamented. As you may recall, Hogan herself passed away on November 18, 2018, from cancer.

But what about the rocky relationship Smith had with her mother? Here's everything we know about the mother-daughter duo and their turbulent history.

To hear model and television personality Anna Nicole Smith tell it, her relationship with her mother, Virgie Mae Hogan, was rife with turmoil, abuse, and neglect. "You know, I had a really rough childhood growing up," she once told Entertainment Tonight. And in another interview, she even accused Hogan of allowing others to abuse her as well. "You want to hear all the things [my mother] did to me?" she asked. "All the things she let my [stepfather] do to me, or let my brother do to me or my sister? All the beatings and the whippings and rape? That's my mother," she declared. 

Even friends publicly discussed Smith's sad upbringing and corroborated her claims. "She was in an abusive situation. She was sexually abused and physically abused," Smith's friend and showbiz colleague Raymond Martino told The Sun in February 2021. "That's what she told me. And that's what she would cry about. I wasn't there, but I believe her," he declared.

Alas, in the brand new documentary "Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me," others and Hogan (via a past uncovered interview) dispelled Smith's claims about enduring abuse at the hands of her mother. 

Virgie Mae Hogan claims that Anna Nicole Smith's stories about her being abusive were all in an effort to make more money. In a past uncovered interview within the confines of the "Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me" doc, Hogan said that when she asked why Smith was making up lies to the public, Smith responded, "I make more money telling sad stories than I make telling good stories." And when Hogan pressed Smith further, asking if she wanted people to think positively of her, Smith said, "Not if bad pays better. 

But that's not all. Smith's longtime friend and fellow exotic dancer, Missy Byrum, has also come forward and refuted Smith's claims of being abused, insisting that Smith actually appropriated her personal stories of childhood abuse. "She made a lot of stuff up," Byrum later told People in a separate interview. 

Still, Hogan was adamant in the years leading up to her own death that she always loved her "beautiful, funny" daughter and was stricken with grief over her passing. "People say that you get over it but you never get over it. You never forget and you never get over it. God just makes a way for you to accept it," she told the Daily Mail in 2017. Perhaps, this is one story we may never get to the bottom of.