Lacey has the kind of normalcy Gypsy yearns for: a circle of friends, a boyfriend, and a contentious relationship with her opinionated mother Mel (Chloë Sevigny) who thinks she has everyone figured out. In particular, she has sexual desires that have not been allowed to be explored and can only look on as her next-door neighbor Lacey (AnnaSophia Robb) and her normal life with a twinge of jealousy. Dee Dee appears to be perfect, almost saint-like, and the lie of Gypsy’s condition opens up the hearts and wallets in all of those around them.īut Gypsy is beginning to think there is something wrong with their deception and yearns for more out of life. Wearing glasses that cover most of her face, a perpetually-shaven head and beaming hopefully in a high and squeaky voice all while her mother pushes her around in a wheelchair, the two appear like they’re the epitome of the feel-good story people share on social media all the time. Hulu.Ī young woman kept in a perpetual child-like appearance, Gypsy cuts quite the sympathetic figure. Believing her child is deathly ill, a condition called Munchausen By Proxy, Dee Dee has kept her daughter isolated and moves her from place to place before any doctors or neighbors can catch on all while Gypsy is kept as both victim and co-conspirator. In reality, Gypsy can walk and Dee Dee has fed her and everyone around them an elaborate lie. The Pepto Bismol pink house complete with a winding handicap ramp might as well be a character of its own, as it represents the façade the two show to the community.

Starting with the aftermath of the murder and working backwards, The Act truly begins with Dee Dee Blanchard (Patricia Arquette) and her chronically-ill, wheelchair-bound daughter Gypsy Rose (Joey King) have moved into a home built by Habitat for Humanity in a close-knit suburb in Missouri. Based on a popular Buzzfeed article covering the case, The Act has a disclaimer that while it’s based on a true story, there are parts that have been fictionalized which seems to be very apt for a story where the lines between truth and deception are blurred. Hulu’s The Act (2019) is an eight-part miniseries that strives to get the central themes and characters right rather than a fact-for-fact telling of the tale, leaving that for the news articles and documentary.

There’s no shortage of shocking, lurid true crime stories that are ripe for adaptation, but the murder of Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard by her daughter Gypsy Rose and her obsessive lover Nicholas Godejohn in 2015 might take the prize for having so many twists and turns it puts most convoluted soap operas to shame.

Hulu the act true story