After scoring big with Neflix’s “The Kissing Booth” last year, actress Joey King returns as Gypsy Rose Blanchard in Hulu’s anthology series “The Act.”
The stranger-than-fiction story centers around Blanchard and her mother Dee Dee (Patricia Arquette), who suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition where a caregiver either fabricates or induces an illness in someone under their care to gain attention and sympathy.
“It was such a mentally challenging role for me,” King told TheWrap. “It required a lot of vulnerability.”
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The story of Gypsy and Dee Dee, which starts off with fraud and ends with the conviction of Gypsy Rose and her boyfriend for Dee Dee’s murder, was first told by the show’s co-creator and co-showrunner Michelle Dean in a 2016 BuzzFeed feature. It was later turned into an HBO documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” in 2017.
“I feel really sorry for her,” King said about Gypsy Rose. “Here is a girl who had no idea how to get out of a horrendous situation she was trapped in and so she took extreme measures.”
For years, Dee Dee, a single mom from Missouri, managed to convince neighbors and the public that her daughter had a whole slew of diseases including leukemia, asthma and muscular dystrophy, as well as having the mental capacity of a 6-year-old as a result of her premature birth. All while, Dee Dee collected donations from non-profit organizations, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
But the sham came to an end after Gypsy Rose plotted her mother’s murder.
“She did something horrible,” King said. “But it’s such a complex, complicated story with so many layers, I think it’s so unfair to pin her as a cold-blooded killer.”
Gypsy Rose is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri, after she had her mother killed by her online boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn. Godejohn is serving life for Dee Dee’s murder.
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“She was a victim for 23 years of her life or more,” King said. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
Watch the interview with King above.
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