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Debunking ‘The Act’ — Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s Family Tells the True Story of Episode 4

True Crime

Updated: Apr 25, 2019 10:36 pm·

By Chelsea Duff

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When you’re watching something that’s “based on a true story,” well, you probably think you’re getting the true story. But Gypsy Rose Blanchard‘s family says that isn’t the case with The Act, the Hulu show written by Michelle Dean, who first interviewed the Blanchards for her BuzzFeed article. Gypsy’s step-mom, Kristy Blanchard, has expressed how upset she is about the show before. Fancy Macelli, a friend of the family and the only official owner of Gypsy’s life story, M.J. Pack, a journalist who covered the case, and Aleah Woodmansee, a friend and neighbor and the inspiration for Lacey, have all also expressed their disappointment. They told In Touch exactly what they thought about the show, and now they’re breaking down everything that they think episode 4 got wrong. Check out the gallery below to see where The Act differs from the true story of what happened to Gypsy.

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Gypsy’s Period

The episode started off with the eerie visual of Dee Dee bathing an adult Gypsy, but Fancy and Kristy say they’re not sure what Michelle based the period scene off of. The family wasn’t even sure if she had gotten her period yet by the time she killed her mom. “I had found no sanitary [products], no pads, no nothing like that,” Kristy said. “No female products in that way. I asked her, ‘Did you have a period?’ Because I know that [with] a lot of medications … you can be really irregular, or who knows if her mom gave her the Depo shot or whatever [so] that she wouldn’t have a period.” The truth, however, was even darker.

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And Her Smile

In the show, Gypsy not telling her mother she was on her period was positioned as her taking some power back, but the family claims her mother controlled her too much even in that regard. “Her mother told her that she couldn’t use women’s sanitary products because she was ‘small in that area,'” Kristy told In Touch. “She was like, ‘No, that’s why I had so many diapers. My mom made me wear a diaper.'”

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Finding the Dating Site

That didn’t happen in real life, either. Though Aleah admits she talked about boys with Gypsy, she says it all “remained pretty tame.” After all, she thought Gypsy was a lot younger than her and treated her like a little sister, and she stressed that she “let Gypsy lead the conversations.” Kristy and Fancy also found this scene unfair. “I feel like they’re all using her as a scapegoat for why Gypsy is interested in boys, why she wants to get out of her house and start interacting and dating,” said M.J. “It’s almost like, if this girl hadn’t been there, showing her her dating profile, talking about boys, wearing skimpy clothes, then maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”

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Lacey Leaving Home

Between the stick-and-poke scene and Lacey’s tumultuous relationship with her mom, the show’s portrayal of the character seems to mirror the exaggerated rumors Dee Dee told Gypsy about Aleah. “They changed her name to Lacey in the show, but anybody who knows anything about the case at one glance knows who that is. In my opinion, it does not add anything to the story to complete bastardize her character the way that they have,” said M.J. “[Gypsy] was so hurt at the way they portrayed Aleah,” Kristy added.

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Caring for Dee Dee

Dee Dee’s health was deteriorating in real life, but the family says it never got to the point where the tables turned and Gypsy became the caregiver. “She wasn’t taking care of her mom. She wasn’t giving her mom shots and all of those things,” said Fancy. “[It wasn’t] that she kind of made her feel guilty. … She used fear tactics and torture, psychological abuse to keep this person in an [illogical] state of mind. And you and I can think, ‘Well, I would’ve just gotten up and walked out of the room.’ You would’ve. I might’ve. But not a kid who’s been dealing with this since the day she was born and has been conditioned to feel this way.”

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That Lawyer Scene

When Dee Dee tries to have Gypsy declared mentally incompetent, she learns that she’ll need Gypsy’s consent. But in real life, the mom didn’t emotionally manipulate her daughter into signing the papers. She didn’t even coerce her. Instead, the family says Dee Dee forged her daughter’s signature. “I have statements from the people that were supposed to be the witnesses on that,” said Fancy. “[They] are long-time friends of the family [and] will tell you that they were forged.”

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Signing the Papers

According to Fancy, the scene in the show made Gypsy seem more complicit in her own abuse. “Gypsy never signed her own paper like that and gave away her guardianship. That didn’t happen. [Dee Dee] forged all of that. She forged documents for the birth certificate. She forged all those different things,” she said.

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A Secret Laptop

That laptop scene was also fabricated according to Kristy. In fact, Gypsy never even had to steal a computer. “We bought the laptop,” Kristy told In Touch. “It was a shared laptop with her mom,” Fancy agreed. And she thinks the scene gives people the wrong idea. “People [on Twitter] have now gone, ‘Well, she stole money from her mom and she bought a computer and she bought a cell phone, so if she could do those things … then why couldn’t she get up and walk into a police station?’ Because those things actually didn’t happen.”

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Discovering the Computer

Gypsy’s mom also didn’t just stumble upon her “secret laptop.” According to Fancy, the computer smash happened years earlier, before she started talking to Nick. It was after Gypsy tried to run away with a man from a comic convention that Dee Dee discovered she’d been talking to people online and destroyed the computer. “And when she smashed that computer, she told Gypsy, ‘If you do this … if you [leave] again, I’m going to do to you exactly what I did to this computer,'” Fancy said.

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The Laptop Smash

The hammer part is real — but Aleah says it went down a little differently. In fact, it happened out on the Blanchard’s front lawn. “Dee Dee took the laptop to her front yard and destroyed it with a hammer,” she shared. It was far from a secret. After also discovering messages shared between Gypsy and Aleah, Dee Dee confronted their neighbor directly. “She told me that she had found all of the messages, and that she wasn’t going to tell my mom, but I cannot talk to Gypsy the way I did, about boys and things,” Aleah told In Touch. “She reminded me that she has the mentality of a young child and that our messages were inappropriate, [and] she told me about destroying the laptop.”

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Physical Restraints

The real-life version of this scene also happened after Gypsy tried to run away. In addition to threatening to “smash” Gypsy’s hands, Fancy said Dee Dee didn’t just try to tie her to the bed, she “chained her daughter to the bed for several days on end.” In the petition Gypsy’s dad, Rod Blanchard, started to request her release, he even wrote that Dee Dee had “handcuffed her to a bed for 2 weeks.” It was that experience that deterred Gypsy from trying to run away again.

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Gypsy’s Choice

But even being chained to a bed and threats of violence couldn’t fully stop Gypsy from making attempts to escape. “It wasn’t an isolated incident,” said Fancy. “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. So 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.'” It was never that Gypsy had the chance to walk out the door and didn’t take it. She did take that chance more than once. However, her foiled attempts and the abuse lead her to conclude that people would never believe her over her mother and that her mother would find her no matter what.