6 major times The Act strayed from the real story

Jerald Raymond Pierce

The Act — “Stay Inside” – Episode 104 — Gypsy’s getting older and Dee Dee is forced to new legal maneuvers to keep control of her “little girl.” But Dee Dee’s limited by her own health problems, and Gypsy goes to greater lengths than ever to connect with men and experience a sexual awakening. Dee Dee Blanchard (Patricia Arquette) and Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Joey King), shown. (Photo by: Brownie Harris/Hulu)

The Act has drawn a lot of attention for its depiction of a bazaar real story of a mother and her daughter. However, it’s possible that the Hulu series takes liberties which keep the story from being as dark as what happened in real life.

Movies and television shows based on real-life events (like Hulu’s The Act) are always bound to take liberties for the sake of storytelling. Sometimes it works out for the best, others it completely wrecks the source material they’re working from.

Michelle Dean wrote an in-depth article for BuzzFeed that brought a very bright spotlight to the dark story behind Gypsy Rose Blanchard and the death of her mother Dee Dee. That 2016 article led to Dean leading the charge on bringing Gypsy’s story to Hulu.

Prior to The Act hitting Hulu, there was the HBO special documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest (by documentarian Erin Lee Carr). And after The Act wraps up there’s set to be another retelling of Gypsy’s story By Proxy.

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The latter is being put together by Gypsy’s real step-mother (Kristy Blanchard) and family friend (and writer) Francesca “Fancy” Macelli. It’s worth noting that Marcelli is the only “official” owner of Gypsy’s life story (per In Touch Weekly).

Ok, all of that is to say, a lot of people have opinions about what went on between Gypsy and her mother and it will forever be impossible to know all of the details since Dee Dee cannot speak for her actions. But throughout The Act’s run on Hulu Macelli and others have been speaking up about some questionable changes The Act’s creative team have decided to make to an already complicated story.

Macelli does say she understands that people have to take liberties with real stories. But, she told In Touch, “It went beyond the fact of, ‘Okay, we’re taking some different liberties with it,’ to, ‘Alright, we’re just gonna totally stray from anything that actually happened, and we’re just gonna go ahead and create this strange narrative that we are going ahead and doing.’ … I kind of looked at it and said, ‘It’s not true crime, and it’s not drama.’ It’s sort of a weird horror that’s kind of bastardizing the story, truthfully.”

From what I’ve seen, here are six big changes The Act has made so far that will completely change how you see what really happened in Gypsy’s life.

The Act — ” ” — Dee Dee Blanchard (Patricia Arquette), Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Joey King) shown. (Photo by: Brownie Harris / Hulu)

1. Downplaying Dee Dee’s control over Gypsy

Let’s start with the most egregious offense: making Dee Dee’s mental and emotional control over Gypsy less than what it really was.

Here are some things that Kristy and Macelli told In Touch never happened. Gypsy never snuck off to buy her own laptop or cell phone. She had a cell phone, but it was on her mother’s plan and the laptop was shared as well.

Gypsy wasn’t manipulated into signing away her medical guardianship. Dee Dee didn’t even give her the chance. Dee Dee just forged the signatures. In fact, according to Macelli, forging signatures was par for the course for Dee Dee when it came to Gypsy.

Then there’s the tying Gypsy up to a bed incident. Hoo-boy did that not happen the way The Act claims it did.

First, Gypsy never ever spat in her mother’s face. According to Kristy’s interview with In Touch, Gypsy was constantly way too scared to ever fight back.

Now, Gypsy did try to run away a few times, including the time we see her run away with the guy from the convention. But each time (well, at least the two times outlined by Macelli in the In Touch article), Dee Dee responded in a frightening manner.

After the convention guy attempted to escape, Dee Dee chained Gypsy to her bed for days (plural, multiple days). And yes, not tied with a nice scarf while verging on tears like it’s portrayed in The Act, she chained her daughter up.

Regarding that incident, Gypsy told People, “She physically chained me to the bed, and put bells on the doors, and told anybody that I probably would have trusted that I was going through a phase, and to tell her if I was doing anything behind her back.”

And another time, well, here’s what Macelli told In Touch: “There had been another incident where the cops brought her back and her mom presented documents saying she was incompetent, she was younger than she was, and all these different things. … When she smashed that computer, she told Gypsy, ‘If you do this … I’m going to do to you exactly what I did to this computer.’ … All of that played into a psyche for Gypsy in a real way of, ‘I can’t leave. I’m never gonna get to leave.’”

This completely changes Gypsy’s entire personality. She wasn’t this person with growing confidence that allowed her to disobey her mother more and more. Gypsy was broken, completely. She was emotionally, physically and mentally beaten to a pulp by Dee Dee.

But hey, I promised seven major changes, so we’re just getting started. Dee Dee’s manipulation (and The Act‘s minimization of it) doesn’t stop with Gypsy.

The Act — “Teeth” – Episode 102 — Dee Dee is on a high since Gypsy will be given the ÒChild of the Year Award,Ó which makes Dee Dee feel like Mother of the Year. But before the big event, Gypsy has a dental emergency that gets the attention of a skeptical doctor who could expose Dee DeeÕs secrets. Dee Dee Blanchard (Patricia Arquette) and Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Joey King), shown. (Photo by: Brownie Harris/Hulu)

2. Gypsy’s dad was actually more involved

Gypsy’s dad, Rod, is technically included in The Act, just not by face. He calls to talk to Gypsy in episode four, but Dee Dee won’t let the two talk, and he sends child support payments.

The weird thing about how Dean portrays him in her version of this story is that in her original article she acknowledges that Rod (and his new wife, Kristy), “saw Gypsy often over the first 10 years of her life.” All that changed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Things spiraled and eventually Dee Dee and Gypsy moved away from Rod and Kristy. But here’s the thing, Dean says “Rod and Kristy spoke to Gypsy pretty often.”

So, while the show makes it seem like Rod wasn’t around or involved, he most definitely was. According to Dean’s report, he sent regular child support and gifts. Now, this might seem like a logical thing to minimize in favor of focusing on the mother/daughter relationship at the heart of this story. But here’s the thing: Rod’s involvement deepens just how manipulative Dee Dee was to an even more disturbing degree.

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Rod was around to know that Gypsy was born healthy, according to Dean. But then Dee Dee became convinced Gypsy was sick and, no matter what doctors said, she was insistent that Gypsy had “a chromosomal defect” causing health problems. The thing is, she seemed to have it all under control that the people around her, including Rod, just believed her.

Dee Dee had lied to the father of her child so effectively that…well, just read this segment from Dean’s BuzzFeed article:

"“The first time Rod saw his daughter walk was in a news report on Gypsy’s arraignment hearing in Wisconsin. No one had prepared them; Kristy had spotted the video on Facebook. Rod was so confused when he saw it that he said his first reaction was, ‘I was really happy that she was walking.’”"

Yeah. Dee Dee had so effectively lied about what was wrong with Gypsy that even Rod (who was actually trying to stay involved in Gypsy’s life) had absolutely no idea that she could walk until after Dee Dee died and Gypsy had been caught.

Dee Dee’s web of manipulation doesn’t stop at Rod, though.

3. Gypsy’s medical situation

We already talked about the fact that Dee Dee forged signatures in order to maintain control over Gypsy, so I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Macelli told In Touch that Dee Dee “fooled literally hundreds of doctors.”

According to In Touch, Dee Dee had Gypsy in and out of hospitals for check-ups and procedures multiple times a month.

I don’t know about you, but the show really makes it seem like Gypsy just spends a ton of time at home with her mom. Macelli complains that The Act undersells just how much time Gypsy actually spent in the hospital. Days on end, multiple times a month. Again, it’s Dee Dee instilling this mentality of control over her daughter.

Per In Touch’s interview with Macelli, while Gypsy knew she could walk, she thought that she could only do so for short periods of time. “She was starved and weakened by medicine, so she couldn’t fight back like they show or exert herself.”

So, if Gypsy was around doctors a lot of the time, then the times in The Act when a doctor and Child Protective Services tried to help her definitely happened, right? Well…

4. No adults came to help Gypsy

Let’s just say it—the medical community failed Gypsy.

Per Dean’s BuzzFeed article, medical records dating back to 2001 showed that doctors at Tulane University Hospital tested Gypsy for muscular dystrophy and found nothing. Those records, despite what Dee Dee said, survived Katrina. But, Dean says, “Most doctors appear from these records to have taken her assertion at face value and didn’t probe.” They just treated (and operated on) Gypsy for what her mother said was wrong with her.

Pajiba has been going episode by episode this season and breaking down major questions people may have regarding Gypsy’s real life. Using previous interviews and documentaries about the tragic story, Pajiba has been able to debunk (or confirm) a lot of choices The Act’s creative team made.

One of the most interesting builds on this idea. Pajiba points out that, in reality, the adults seen helping Gypsy in the premiere episodes of The Act never existed.

Child Protective Services were called in the second episode by a doctor who was concerned for Gypsy’s wellbeing. According to Pajiba, though, there’s no indication that CPS was ever called. So, no, there was not a doctor who secretly tried to give Gypsy coke to prove she didn’t have a sugar allergy.

It’s worth noting that that doctor never shows up again (it’s hard to continue writing in a doctor who isn’t actually in the story you’re telling). The show jumps forward years and I guess we’re supposed to assume the doctor just stopped caring? Felt defeated and moved on with her life?

Now, it follows to increase the presence of helpful adults for Gypsy to decline help from if you want to shy away from the dark truth of how subservient Gypsy was to her mother. Throughout this series, Dean and The Act team seem to have given Gypsy choice after choice of her choosing her mother. In real life, however, evidence and testimonies point to the fact that Gypsy was trapped. She wasn’t choosing her mother, she just couldn’t escape her.

The Act — “Plan B” – Episode 105 — Gypsy and Nick scheme to meet in person and hope to win Dee Dee’s approval, but when their plan goes disastrously wrong, they’ll be pushed to make an extreme choice in order to be together. Nick Godejohn (Calum Worthy), shown. (Photo by: Brownie Harris/Hulu)

5. Nick’s dominance

Enter Nick to save Gypsy from Dee Dee (aka, murder Dee Dee).

Let’s dive back into what Kristy and Macelli told In Touch Weekly. In two separate episodes, they emphasized the fact that, while The Act shows Gypsy occasionally bossing Nick around or working hard to convince him to do things, in reality, there are texts that show that Nick was very much in charge of their relationship.

(As a caveat, they do compliment Calum Worthy’s performance.)

Macelli said that The Act goes out of its way “to make Nick look like just an incompetent moron.” Which, she says, is contradictory to how dominant he was over Gypsy. And Gypsy, according to text messages Macelli and Kristy have, show that Gypsy had been so conditioned to obey by her mother that she just didn’t question the things Nick would say to her.

Additionally, the movie theatre scene actually went a lot better for Nick when he first met Dee Dee. According to In Touch, Nick and Dee Dee talked in line and actually had a nice conversation. Dee Dee didn’t turn on Nick until later when she caught the two in the lobby together and Nick tried to get Gypsy to sit next to him during the rest of the movie.

(Kristy and Macelli say the bathroom sex scene was pretty spot on, though.)

Oh, and that call Nick made to Dee Dee? Didn’t happen. And, by the sounds of it, thank goodness it didn’t.

Macelli told In Touch that, had that happened, what happened to Gypsy would have been much worse than what happened in Dean’s show. “If that had happened, I can honestly say I’m not sure we’d even be sitting here talking,” Macelli told In Touch. “Dee would have been way too suspicious and locked it all down. She might have really unraveled.”

Again, it’s easy to understand Dean and the creative team behind The Act wanting to give Gypsy some agency so she doesn’t become a constant punching bag for everyone in her life. But there’s a pattern of behavior that gets lost when you dull down how controlling Dee Dee and Nick were. You miss the fact that Gypsy gravitated to people who told her what to do and how to live her life.

It completely changes Gypsy’s character.

The Act — “A Whole New World” – Episode 106 — While Gypsy and Nick are on the run, flashbacks to a much younger Dee Dee reveal how trauma with her own mother set her up for conflict with Gypsy. Nick Godejohn (Calum Worthy) and Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Joey King), shown. (Photo by: Brownie Harris/Hulu)

6. Gypsy was much less worried about being caught

Throughout episode six, The Act shows Gypsy in an almost constant state of panic and worry. She freaks out when cops come into the diner where she and Nick are getting food. She’s put on edge from the simple sight of a mother and her daughter at the motel vending machine.

However, when ABC News asked if Gypsy had been worried, Gypsy said, “That never crossed my mind. I honestly didn’t think we were going to get caught.”

That mindset would make the fact that they were seen on surveillance cameras casually doing things like shopping at Wal-Mart. Plus, you have to be pretty confident to post on you and your mother’s joint Facebook page “That [expletive] is dead.”

That’s a level of confidence I didn’t know people could possess. Yet, here we are. And for some reason, despite all the agency The Act built into Gypsy’s character earlier in the season, she’s turned into a panic-stricken, pill-popping puddle as soon as they leave the scene of the crime.

Oh yeah, that scene with the cops in the diner that really sets Gypsy off? It never happened, according to Macelli’s In Touch interview.

Macelli speculates that the scene was used to make sure the audience knew Nick and Gypsy had no idea what they were doing (accurate). She also then points out that the show then draws a funny comparison to the brilliant killers Bonnie and Clyde.

I’m writing this before the final two episodes of the season, but I’ll be interested to see how The Act reconciles Gypsy’s nervousness in the show with the fact that real life Gypsy and Nick being extremely carefree directly led to their arrest.

So what do you think? Do you agree with Macelli and Kristy that The Act is missing elements that make Gypsy’s story even darker? Or do you think The Act made good choices with their changes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Jerald Raymond Pierce

Jerald Raymond Pierce is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in American Theatre magazine, the Seattle Times, the Charleston Post and Courier and the Syracuse Post-Standard. He has his BFA in Acting from Ohio University and MA in Arts Journalism from Syracuse University.