Is The Act based on a true story? Here's what we know about 2019's drama series

The 2019 crime drama, The Act, narrates the true story of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, played by Joey King, who plotted to murder her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard (Patricia Arquette). She claimed her mother was physically abusing her and made up illnesses to control her life.

The Hulu miniseries follows Dee Dee’s murder in 2015, and the lives of the Blanchard mother-daughter duo is also shown in flashback scenes. After meeting Nick Godejohn online, she allegedly planned how to kill her mother and fled with him to Wisconsin.

The Act shows how Dee Dee creates the impression of Gypsy's numerous illnesses, and, how as she grew older, the latter tries to break free of her mother’s hold, which leads to her eventual death and Gypsy’s imprisonment.

More on this in our story.

Is The Act based on a true story? Details explored

The Act focusses on the real-life story of the Gypsy and Dee Dee Blanchard, mother-daughter duo. As shown in the series, Dee Dee made her daughter appear as an ailing person who was suffering from multiple diseases. From sleep apnea, eye problems, to Anemia, epilepsy, and sugar allergy, and many more, Dee Dee always came up with illnesses to describe her daughter’s condition and why she needs a wheelchair.

Due to her background of being a nurse once, Dee Dee knew about medicines and sounded convincing to others, even doctors. She also claimed that Gypsy’s mental age was of a young child, but that was not true at all. It was later revealed that Gypsy was perfectly healthy and Dee Dee just made up all the illnesses, which pointed at the fact that she might have been suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological problem. However, since she has passed away, there is no way to ascertain if she had the problem or not.

The Act also shows how growing up Gypsy begins to seek freedom and even tries to escape but is caught by her mother. Just like in real life, Gypsy begins a relationship with Nick and plots the murder of her mother. Dee Dee was stabbed to death by Nick, after which the young couple fled the scene.

Just as it was shown in the biographical crime drama, Dee Dee had been obsessed with her daughter’s health since she was an infant, which only grew as she began to grow up. Most of the details about Dee Dee making up, Gypsy being severely ill and her murder are true. However, there were some creative liberties used to make the narrative more thrilling for a TV show.

The Act used minor creative liberties

As per the documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest, Dee Dee was never questioned or suspected of anything regarding her treatment of her daughter, as everyone around her believed her words. She even cut off Gypsy’s father from the scene by telling everyone that he was a drug addict. Moreover, the neighbors and the doctors were never suspicious due to the confident tone with which Dee Dee presented her lies.

The Act has been fictionalized a bit with the addition of Poorna Jagannathan's Dr. Chandra, who suspected that something was wrong between the mother and daughter, and reported the mother to CPS. This was just an added element on the show and it didn’t happen in real life. Ther was only one doctor in Gypsy’s life that had suspected that Dee Dee might be suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy but never took any action against it.

Another incident that was fictional in The Act was Dee Dee’s arrest for writing a bad check. There are no records of any arrest against the single mother in real life, and, hence, it was added in the series to depict Dee Dee as someone who had criminal tendencies including lying and deceiving.

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The Act is available to stream on Hulu.

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