Eminem’s ‘Stans’ Goes Into Shocking Detail About His Relationship with Fame

Widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time, Eminem has remained both a steady presence and a controversial figure in the music industry for over 25 years, with the famed performer having sold over 220 million records worldwide while earning numerous accolades, including 15 Grammys, a Primetime Emmy, and an Academy Award. In 2025, Steven Leckhart directed the engrossing documentary Stans, which explores the rapper’s life and legacy through the eyes of his superfans.

The 102-minute film was released on Paramount+ on August 26, 2025, and received rave reviews from critics and fans, with the doc nabbing an 88% Rotten Tomatoes score and 94% Popcornmeter score from audiences while providing his devoted fanbase an intimate look at his personal struggles, jaw-dropping career highs, and complex relationship with his “Stans.” Let’s take a look at the documentary’s most shocking revelations.

Eminem Recalls the Moment Fame Changed His Life Forever

Eminem is featured in the documentary Stans

Paramount+

In the intimate documentary, Eminem details the moment in which he realized that his fame had completely changed his life, as the rapper described a frightening time when he was swarmed by fans after he went to the mall with his daughter Hailie. “It got to the point where I picked her up and I’m like, ‘Come on kiddo, time to go,’ and as I’m walking fast and faster they’re walking faster and faster and I feel like I’m being chased out the f***ing mall.” Eminem revealed it was the last time he ever went to a mall as himself and “not in a disguise,” before further describing the intense moment:

“And that was one of the points I thought my life really has changed, I can’t do this anymore, I gotta protect my baby. So that was a scary moment. Scary for her too. She doesn’t remember, she was too little to remember it, but I remember it and it was f***ing crazy.”

The Rapper Gets Candid Over His Addiction Struggles

The legendary rapper also got candid when it came to his struggles with addiction, as he had grown dependent on prescription pills like Xanax, Ambien, Vicodin, and Valium throughout various points between 1999 and 2008, when he ultimately got clean and has remained sober for 17 years. Eminem looked back on painful memories that led to his continuous addiction hurdles, like the death of his best friend Proof in 2006 and the overwhelming pressures of his fame.

“I got into this vicious cycle of, ‘I’m depressed so I need more pills,’ and then your tolerance gets so high that you end up overdosing. I woke up in the hospital and I didn’t know what happened. I woke up in the hospital with tubes in me and s*** and I couldn’t get up, I wanted to move. After the overdose, I came home like I needed something … like, I’m gonna die if I don’t do anything.”

After accidentally overdosing on methadone in December 2007 and missing his daughter Hailie’s birthday, Eminem began his sobriety journey and retreated from the limelight to fully focus on his health and recovery. He had to “relearn how to walk, talk, and for the most part had to relearn how to rap again” following the overdose, and he used his love for Hailie as a major motivation for getting and staying clean. Eminem’s passion for music came back in full force, and he “started treating sobriety like a super power and I took pride in the fact that I was able to quit,” with the rapper revealing:

“My writing had gotten terrible. When I started to get it back, it was exciting. Because I felt it. It would be conversations, just having conversations with people or the TV. … It was hitting me really fast and I was writing songs really quickly.”

Eminem’s Most Fierce & Loyal Stans Are Interviewed

An interesting element of the documentary is that the world’s biggest Eminem fans were interviewed, with his most devoted followers sitting down to explain what the rapper means to them and his impact on their lives. The film also highlighted how Eminem had been contacted by extreme “Stans” throughout the years, with one unsettling letter reading: “Our psychic connection is so strong. I sometimes think you are god. I love listening to you and acting like we’re friends.” Many of his most loyal followers expressed their concern for the rapper’s safety because of overzealous fans.

Each “Stan” interviewed shared their respective stories about how they first discovered Eminem and his music, with the participants respectfully and passionately expressing what the rap icon means to them and how he’s impacted their lives. One woman interviewed confessed that she had 22 tattoos of the Grammy-winning artist and is now in the Guinness Book of World Records because of them, with the fan saying she met her husband through the Eminem fandom (and even married in Detroit) despite many people telling her she should be in a “mental institution” over her music obsession.

For his part, Eminem has grown to accept the love he receives from his followers, even if he fully doesn’t understand it; he still finds it both strange and flattering when fans visit where his once-condemned house used to stand and show up at his old stomping grounds. After the release of The Slim Shady LP in 1999, the rapper was shocked by the massive fan response and questioned at the time why, all of a sudden, what he had to say “now is important” before adding, “It was a weird, strange kind of adjustment, and my personality wasn’t well-equipped to handle that.”

‘Stans’ Provides Fans an Unapologetic Look at Eminem’s Career

Eminem has never been one to shy away from controversy and remains his refreshingly unfiltered self, and the documentary impressively examines his meteoric rise to superstardom, chronicling his early days dominating rap battles to meeting his beloved mentor and friend Dr. Dre, to putting out one record-breaking album after another. The inspiration behind his groundbreaking 2000 single “Stan” is further explored, as he explained how he received many disturbing letters from fans who took the violent content in his lyrics seriously, thus inspiring the cautionary tale/song.

The term “stan” was even added to the Oxford English Dictionary in June 2018, and was described as “an overzealous or obsessive fan, esp. of a particular celebrity.” Eminem himself had looked up to and idolized fellow rap legend LL Cool J, and he couldn’t help but wonder if someone else put him on a pedestal like he did the music pioneer. The rapper revealed in the doc: “I thought, ‘This has to be about an obsessed fan who’s taking my s*** too literal and slow down, I’m just Marshall, I’m not your f***ing savior.”

Stans delves into Eminem’s history of being “discovered” by Dr. Dre and Interscope Records’ Jimmy Iovine in 1998 and his phenomenal discography, from his record-breaking albums like The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show to winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song for his box office hit 8 Mile. Over 25 years in the music industry, Eminem knows everything he has is thanks to his passionate and loyal fans, with the rapper praising his followers for remaining by his side every step of the way:

“A true die-hard fan really does, I think, understand me and every aspect of me. And understands that I am just a regular person. I’m just a human being. The reason they connect with me is because they see some of themselves in me… Because they understand me, and I feel like I understand them. I get them because they’re really me.”