Gypsy Rose Blanchard says that "The Act," which earned Joey King an Emmy nomination for playing her, negatively impacted her life in prison.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images; Brownie Harris/Hulu
Gypsy Rose Blanchard-Anderson (née Blanchard) says that she isn't "thankful" for the massive attention that "The Act," the Hulu series that adapts her life, brought to her while she was in prison.
In her new ebook "Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom," a preview to her forthcoming memoir, Blanchard-Anderson reflects on her childhood and time in prison through her own writing and interview transcripts with cowriters Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani. In the book's fourth chapter, "On Becoming a Public Figure," she writes about her relationship with the fame that resulted from Hulu adapting her story — and Joey King playing a version of her on-screen.
"I was not consulted or compensated for a show that made actor Joey King a household name," Blanchard-Anderson said, writing that she still has not seen the series.
"The Act," however, turned her into an overnight celebrity, both outside and inside Chillicothe Correctional Center, the Missouri prison where she served her sentence, despite the fact that Hulu wasn't available to inmates. The attention differed from any prior publicity she had received from projects like the HBO documentary "Mommy Dead and Dearest," which she participated in.
"'The Act' brought an onslaught of emails from strangers all over the world," Blanchard-Anderson writes. "The corrections officers looked at me differently. Inmates wanted my autograph; others asked me for money, assuming being on television means you're rich."
"The Act" depicts Blanchard-Anderson and then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn's murder of Dee Dee Blanchard, casting Joey King as Blanchard-Anderson and Patricia Arquette as her mother Dee Dee. Michelle Dean, who reported on Blanchard-Anderson's story in a 2016 BuzzFeed article, cocreated the series with Nick Antosca. King was nominated for the Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a limited series or movie for her performance.
Antosca told Business Insider in 2019 that he wished that he would have been able to consult Blanchard-Anderson while making the show. At the time, he said that Blanchard-Anderson had been involved with the series when he signed on, but later stepped back.
Blanchard-Anderson writes in "Released," however, that she wasn't asked for her consent to make the series, and that she "didn't have any participation in it." She did not respond to BI's request for comment in time for publication.
The heightened attention after "The Act" negatively impacted her life in prison, Blanchard-Anderson writes in her book. In one instance, she says she was put into solitary confinement for two weeks after a stranger made a social-media post saying they wished they could break her out of prison. After the post was sent to Chillicothe Correctional Center, Blanchard-Anderson writes that she was held in solitary while officers examined her correspondences and writing to determine whether she and the stranger were connected and if she had any escape plans.
"I was like, 'My parole hearing is in a few months and I've already done the majority of my time," she told coauthor Melissa Moore in a phone conversation transcribed in the book. "I would never do that. I'm not fucking crazy, y'all!"
Despite the negative experience, Blanchard-Anderson has said that she isn't opposed to someone else playing her in another adaptation down the line.
"It's funny, because I always wanted Millie Bobby Brown to play me," she told Access Hollywood after her release from prison. "I think she'd be good at playing me."
Representatives for Dean, Antosca, King, and Hulu did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
