Debunking ‘The Act’ — Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s Family Tells the True Story of Episode 6

True Crime

Apr 18, 2019 9:46 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, and so has Fancy Macelli, a friend of the family and the only official owner of Gypsy’s life story. They told In Touch exactly what they thought about episode 5, ‘Plan B,’ and now they’re breaking down everything that they think episode 6 got wrong, too. Fancy, who’s handling press for the family, spoke on behalf of both of them. Check out the gallery below to see where The Act differs from the true story of what happened to Gypsy.

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Dee Dee Doesn't Put Father's Name On Birth Certificate

Gypsy’s Missing Dad

In the show, Dee Dee is seemingly alone at the hospital when she gives birth — and when a nurse asks about who to put as the father on the birth certificate, she doesn’t answer. “I felt like this was a direct dig at Rod,” Fancy said. “Rod was at the hospital right after Gypsy was born. He got a call from the family telling him his daughter was born. He was out in Grand Isle and he rushed to the hospital to be there.” Fancy continued, “He was most definitely on the birth certificate. Again, painting him as not in the picture even at this time in her life further vilifies Rod.” The Blanchard’s real-life family photos show he was an active parent.

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Gypsy and Dee Dee Live With Grandmother Emma Pitre

Living With Grandma

Though the mom and daughter did live with family members, it wasn’t as constant as it seemed. “Dee Dee and Gypsy lived with her mother [Emma Pitre] and father [Claude Pitre] for about 3 months,” Fancy shared. “Rod tried to make a go of it one more time and got [the three of] them their own apartment. It lasted about a month, and he left because he and Dee Dee couldn’t get along. She was very overbearing and he realized he just didn’t love her. Dee Dee and Gypsy remained on their own until Emma became sick and they moved home for Dee Dee to care for her mom.” At other points in time, they did live with Dee Dee’s dad and her step-mom, and at another time some family friends, but it was most often just Dee Dee and Gypsy.

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Failure to Thrive

“Gypsy was not diagnosed with ‘failure to thrive’ or given a schedule from a doctor,” Fancy told In Touch. However, Dee Dee did believe that Gypsy had other health issues. “[They] started at the age of 3 months with the breathing issues. She demanded to have the C-Pap machine.” Though Dee Dee “had already established breathing problems, feeding issues, hearing issues, and a chromosonal disorder” before Gypsy was seven, the more serious “illnesses” started once she was a little older.

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Gypsy Rose Blanchard Uses Breathing Machine

The Breathing Machine

Speaking of those illnesses, a young Gypsy can be seen in the show using a breathing machine, but it’s never explained. “There was so much that they could and needed to show with the medical abuse that I don’t understand why they have downplayed it while adding so much filler [like the ‘failure to thrive’],” Fancy said.

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Dee Dee vs. Emma

The relationship shown between Dee Dee and her mother seems strange. “The Act makes it look they were in competition for parenting Gypsy and this was not the case,” Fancy said. “Dee Dee always appeared to everyone to be a perfectly capable parent. Odd and overprotective but capable.” Instead, Fancy clarifies that Dee Dee and Emma “were very close. Dee Dee was the favorite child and it was obvious.” According to the family, “It was more of an alliance between Emma and Dee Dee to garner sympathy for Dee Dee all her life. She was treated very differently than the other siblings by both her father and her mother. … They do believe that Emma displayed similar issues [to Dee Dee’s Munchausen syndrome by proxy], but nowhere to the extent that Dee Dee took it to. It was more of the fact that Emma doted on Dee Dee and made her be different and favored from [her other five children]. She did claim Dee Dee was sick a lot and told the kids to be quiet because she needed her rest. But they felt like that was so Dee Dee could do what she wanted and not have to do the things they had to do like chores.”

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A Young Mom

Fancy also thought the characterization of Dee Dee herself seemed “whiny” and “wishy-washy,” explaining that it seemed to be meant to inspire sympathy. But Dee Dee “wasn’t an uneducated woman. She worked in the medical field. She worked with her step-mom (before she was her step-mom) and Kristy at the hospital.” According to Fancy, “She was knowledgable and a strong person. It’s really a strange portrayal and shows that they did not take the time to educate themselves on Dee Dee at all. She wouldn’t have been able to con an entire nation of doctors, nurses, charities, social workers if she wasn’t a strong person. The reason she got away with it all was that she was smart and strong and knew exactly what to say and do to get everyone in line with her story.”

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Jailbird Dee Dee

Though the mom did have her fair share of legal troubles, she never actually spent six months behind bars. “She was pulled over, and a warrant for the check fraud was found,” Fancy explained. “Gypsy was in the car when this happened and Claude (Dee Dee’s dad) was called to come and pick Gypsy up. Dee Dee spent one night in jail and was released on bond. Kristy remembers getting the phone call the next day for Dee Dee telling her that she was arrested and Gypsy was there. In addition, nobody threatened her or tried to shank her. That’s all in there for extra unneeded drama.” And Dee Dee’s mom certainly wasn’t left to raise Gypsy at any point in her life. “Dee Dee wasn’t arrested until after Emma passed.”

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Dee Dee Moves Home to Care For Mom Emma Pitre

Caring for Grandma Pitre

Dee Dee and Gypsy really did live with Emma while they were caring for — and things may actually have been shady as was hinted in the show. “It is rumored by the Pitre family that Dee Dee had a hand in Emma’s death, but it has never been confirmed,” Fancy said. You’ll have to wait to see Fancy’s show about the family, By Proxy, to get the full story, but there were definitely theories floating around. “They suspected she facilitated Emma dying … [but they couldn’t] prove it. They believed if something was really wrong or off, the doctors would figure out what it was.” It was the same with Gypsy, whose “illnesses” got worse after Emma passed. “[The family] couldn’t really figure out what was going on. … Anytime they raised questions about anything Dee Dee did parenting wise, she’d disappear for long periods of time and cut them all off. They assumed if the doctors were backing it up, then it must be true. It was very confusing for all of them.”

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Cousin Janet

“No, they did not live with a cousin,” Fancy clarified. “The closest [real-life figure] to the cousin would have been Dee Dee’s two sisters, but they were not close with Dee Dee. She distanced herself as much as she could.” Dee Dee’s nephew, Bobby Pitre, has spoken with In Touch in the past, and Fancy says he was “around a lot” when he was a teen. “He was probably the closest to Dee Dee.” However, Gypsy’s mom kept them fairly isolated. “The family said even at family functions, while she would show up, she kept to herself. … She acted like she was better than all of them.”

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Gypsy Rose Blanchard's Trampoline Accident

The Trampoline Accident

According to Fancy, this scene was completely fabricated. Not only that, the actual real life accident was even more dramatic — but it involved Dee Dee’s father, who seemingly didn’t make it into the show. “Gypsy [was in] a motorcycle accident with her grandfather,” she told In Touch. “They had a minor crash and she ended up with a road rash.” However, Dee Dee played up her injuries — and that’s when the wheelchair came into the picture. “The motorcycle accident was weird enough, but to believe a kid fell off a trampoline and that everyone bought she was paralyzed from that is unbelievable. … Instead, it was very calculated and strategic.”

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Gypsy Rose Blanchard Starts Using Wheelchair

Gypsy’s Wheelchair

It didn’t belong to her dead grandmother. In fact, Fancy says Dee Dee found it used “from God knows where” and brought it home and “shoved Gypsy in it.” It was after the motorcycle accident, which happened when Gypsy was 6 or 7. “Everyone thought she was just being overprotective, but that it would pass. But it began to morph from there. … Once she put her in that chair, it was all over. She began inventing more and more things and Gypsy never got out of that chair. … At the first hint of anyone in the family questioning [Dee Dee], she moved away to Slidell [in Louisiana].”

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Gypsy Rose Blanchard Self-Medicating in The Act

Still Self-Medicating

Gypsy’s many illnesses were fabricated by her mother — but even by the time she escaped, she wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t. In The Act, the character is shown popping pills even after leaving home, though it seems rooted more in anxiety than anything else. Eagle-eyed fans will also notice that the meds she’s taking were prescribed to her mom, Dee Dee. In real life, Fancy said Gypsy was still taking prescriptions, but they were anti-seizure medications. “Beyond [those pills, she wasn’t taking anything else] that we know of,” she said. “She really didn’t know what was for what since [her mom] managed it all. So her plan was to see a doctor when she got a bit settled.”

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Gypsy Rose Blanchard Films Video of Her And Nick Godejohn In Hotel

Gypsy’s Hotel Video

Though there are plenty of scenes invented for the show, the video taken in the hotel room is real — and you can see some of it in the HBO documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest. “Yes, the recording with the brownies happened,” said Fancy. “It’s creepy for sure. And it’s something Gypsy is very embarrassed by. She relayed to me when I spoke to her about it a while back that she wishes she’d never done that. It was her first time feeling free, and she was still in shock about the whole thing. She understands it portrays her in a bad way and really doesn’t know what she was thinking when she did it.” The only explanation she can offer? “She felt extreme freedom for the first time in her life.” It wasn’t a celebration of the crime, but of Gypsy finally feeling in control of her own life.

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Gypsy Rose Blanchard Talks to Cops in Diner Scene

Cops in the Diner

The morning after the murder, Gypsy and Nick are seen heading out for a “fancy” breakfast at a diner. But that never actually happened. “I’m not sure why it was in there except to maybe create this sense that they didn’t fully know what they were doing,” Fancy said. And they definitely didn’t. After committing the murder, it seems the couple was pretty much playing it by ear.

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Special Delivery

That’s how mailing the knife came into play. “Neither Nick or Gypsy had done a whole lot of traveling by bus or airplane,” Fancy said. “They assumed since there were metal detectors at airports, that there could be some at bus depots too. So they mailed the knife to themselves. Again, not big masterminds here. They were both so naïve.”

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Ticket Problems

The bus scene also goes to show how little they’d planned ahead. In real life, though, it wasn’t that Nick hadn’t actually bought a ticket for Gypsy. It was that neither half of the couple had yet purchased a ticket to Wisconsin. “They needed the money taken from Dee Dee’s stash to purchase a ticket for Gypsy. That is truly how little they really thought things out. They had no understanding of how things really worked and that they might not be able to just walk in and get a cheap bus ticket,” Fancy said. “They literally thought $5,000 was going to last them for years.”

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Bonnie and Clyde

It wasn’t exactly a romantic getaway IRL. “[During] the bus ride, they were unable to sit together, so there are text messages between the two,” Fancy said. And those text messages prove that the dynamic we see between Gypsy and Nick on screen doesn’t mirror the one that they had in real life. “They go out of their way to make Nick look like just an incompetent moron. … Based on all the evidence in the discovery file, Nick was very much in charge of his own thoughts and actions. He was capable of planning and carrying out a murder. [The show adds] in several scenes that show Gypsy being abusive to Nick almost, and there is no evidence that this happened. … After the murder, he was very much in charge of things.” But no matter how in charge Nick was of Gypsy, the Fancy believes the Bonnie and Clyde comparisons are off-base in general. “Bonnie and Clyde evaded police for years, they were masterminds and cold-blooded killers for their own greed. Comparing Gypsy and Nick to them makes them something they are not.”