The real-life inspiration for The Act—a Hulu series about Dee Dee Blanchard, a woman who ends up murdered after her bizarre actions ruin her daughters life—is so surreal, that viewers cant be blamed for wanting to know how closely the series mirrors reality. The shows representation of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the daughter, and her boyfriend, Nick Godejohn, incorporates some real-life details and invents others. Heres what you need to know.
On the third episode of The Act, “Two Wolverines,” Gypsy (Joey King) meets Godejohn (played by Calum Worthy) at a convention. The young man causes Gypsy to question why she, at the presumed age of 18, is still so closely monitored by her mother. The flirtation is substantive enough to inspire Gypsy Rose to steal from her mothers savings, buy a cell phone, and develop a text-message relationship with the guy who, audiences know, will eventually kill Dee Dee in 2015.
In The Act, Nick is portrayed as a happy-go-lucky guy who ultimately becomes Gypsys first romantic interest. But thats not quite accurate. According to Michelle Deans BuzzFeed article, on which The Act is based, Gypsy met a different 35-year-old man in 2011 at a sci-fi convention and attempted to escape her mother to be with him—getting as far as the mans hotel room. But Dee Dee managed to find them in the room, and presented the man with counterfeit papers alleging Gypsy was a minor. (Gypsy, at the time, was actually 19.) After the incident, Dee Dee was so angry that she allegedly “smashed the family computer with a hammer.”
Gypsy met the real Nick on a Christian dating Web site in 2012, three years before her mothers murder. According to Dean, Nick “didnt care that [Gypsy] was in a wheelchair. And Gypsy planned to marry him. They were both Catholic. They had agreed on names for their children.” They maintained a long-distance relationship—he lived in Wisconsin, while Gypsy and her mother were in Missouri—communicating via text message. As their romance deepened, the text correspondence reportedly became increasingly sexual and violent.
“Nick was so in love with her and so obsessed with her that he would do anything,” Godejohns attorney Dewayne Perry would later argue in a 2018 trial. “And Gypsy knew that.”
Nick and Gypsy had reportedly been plotting ways to be together for more than a year before Dee Dees murder. One plan of theirs entailed a staged a run-in with Gypsy, her mother, and Nick at a local movie theater. (Gypsy managed to make the meeting happen at a local screening of Cinderella, but her mom “hated” Nick.) But, as the real-life Godejohn claimed in an interview last year, he and Gypsy settled on murdering Dee Dee because that was the only scenario in which Dee Dee—a master manipulator—could not lie her way back into an abusive relationship with her daughter.
“If [Gypsy] tried to go to the police, due to the way her mom was making her be portrayed [. . .] she would have basically looked like a lunatic that no one would believe due to what her mom was putting in everyone elses head,” Godejohn said. “She felt that it was a non-escapable path she was on and she needed someone to understand her enough to be willing to basically risk their life for her.”
In the same interview, Nick claimed that Gypsy inherited Dee Dees manipulation skills and used them to convince him that he should murder her mother.
“She was brought up to lie and lie and lie and lie,” he said. “She was brought up to basically play the victim role thats the way she was brought up. Shes only doing what she was taught.”
During Nicks trial, Gypsy admitted that she “talked him into” murdering her mother. Asked why she dRead More – Source
[contf] [contfnew] 
Vanity Fair
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
