Much of the world population lives outside of primate habitat countries, and thus only knows primates from contexts outside of the wild, including zoos and television. Zoos are known to show a distorted image of primate behavior because captive animals often behave differently from their wild counterparts. Nature documentaries, on the other hand, have always been trusted to show true-to-life wild primate behavior. However, when I watched nature documentaries, I saw a distorted image of primate behavior that differed substantially from what I observed as a primatologist studying real primates in the wild. I set out to investigate nature documentaries from the perspective of a trained field primatologist. Although approaching this research as a primatologist, I examined a new kind of question within the field of primatology. As such, I drew on literature from various disciplines, including film studies, conservation psychology, and history. I also had to be creative with my methods, blending research methods in psychology, primatology, and historical analysis. My image- and data-rich presentation will focus on what I found while screening 210 primate documentaries to compare the real world of primates to the world portrayed on television and in the movies.