On March 20th, Hulu premiered a true crime show starring Patricia Arquette and Joey King. The series tells the story of Dee Dee Blanchard, an overprotective mother who dedicates her life to caring for her “ill” daughter, Gypsy.
The first season, which is currently out on Hulu, tells the backstory of Gypsy’s upbringing. The show starts with the two moving into their new house built by Habitat for Humanity. Throughout the first few episodes, there are flashbacks of Dee Dee’s murder. We can tell there is something off about Dee Dee, but we sympathize for Gypsy.
In the true story, Gypsy believed that she was born with the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. Her mother also had her under the impression that she had multiple illnesses and disabilities such as muscular dystrophy, leukemia, asthma, allergies to sugar, and more. Dee Dee had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which is why she told her daughter all of these false diagnoses. Dee Dee also lied about her age, so by the time Gypsy was actually older, she had started to learn about the lies. She had her mother killed by a boyfriend she met online and is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for her involvement in murdering Dee Dee Blanchard.
The show starts to unfold when Gypsy wakes up in the middle of the night and starts walking around. The day before, she overheard a doctor tell her mom that she doesn’t have a sugar allergy. This is when she realizes something is up. She starts sneaking behind her mother’s back and talking to people online after her mother forbade this.
Gypsy and her mother went to a science convention together when Dee Dee told the lady at the ticket booth that her daughter was 13. Gypsy started to realize these lies didn’t line up because her mother told her she was 15. When she got home, she looked on her birth certificate, which read that she was 19 at the time.
Dee Dee claimed that the proof of these illnesses got “lost” in Hurricane Katrina, so the doctors just took her word for it, for the most part. One of her doctors started to suspect something, though, and she tried to tell Gypsy that she wasn’t actually allergic to sugar and doesn’t need a feeding tube.
At this point, there are only 4 episodes of “The Act,” but a new episode comes out every Wednesday.