'The Act' Writer Michelle Dean Has Been with Gypsy Rose Blanchard for Years
Michelle Dean knew about the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard before most people in the world. The surreal Springfield, Missouri crime involving a beloved mother and chronically-ill daughter that Dean reported on for BuzzFeed News in 2016 reads as a perfectly insane mad lib: falsified medical records, child abuse, a sexually explicit online romance, and, of course, murder. Since her reporting, the story has been adapted into a documentary and a fictionalized Lifetime movie. Now, almost three years after the original piece was published, it lives on in the first season of The Act. Patricia Arquette stars as Dee Dee Blanchard and Joey King plays her daughter, Gypsy Rose. But the one through-line is Dean. It's her name that appears as co-creator, producer, and writer as the credits roll.
Looking at her resumé, Dean is the safest set of hands to carry the grisly murder into the murky world of fiction. She has a background in law and journalism, and when you're putting together a story that is ultimately rooted in a complex mix of perception and delusion, you need someone that's able to see every angle possible-even the angles that aren't rooted in truth.
Dean talked with Esquire.com to explain how a viral BuzzFeed story was turned into a Hulu series, what responsibility we have to true-crime-turned-fiction, and what a Season Two could look like.
ESQ: This case seems so complicated. You've followed it from the initial reporting to a semi-fictional representation. What responsibility do you think a writer has to honor the integrity of the crime versus amping it up with drama?
Michelle Dean: I think one of the things that was true about this crime is that it had this "stranger than fiction" quality for people who first encountered it, so for us making the show, we felt we didn't need to amp up the drama in that way. Something very dramatic naturally happened here. The stakes obviously are very clear when you have a murder and you're not trying to figure out who did it-you have more of a "why did it happen?" So I think the responsibility that you have-the truth of the story-there is an emotional truth of the story, [at least] as much as you can apprehend it from the facts.
Of course people who go through this experience have all sorts of different takes on what happened. In sifting through those perspectives and trying to look at all the different angles, you end up coming up with your own view of what the truth is, and that's the version you end up becoming true to. It's true that sometimes-I'm not saying often or who-it can be the case that Hollywood comes in and dresses up the story in a way that doesn't honor the original event.
I feel like the more I watch, the more I see that it's ultimately a story about perception. How do you adapt something with so many perspectives into something for the screen?
I think you do end up focusing on one of the perspectives, and in our case, we ended up focusing in on what life might have been like in that house. I think we-well, I was insecure about that from the get-go. We were in that situation where not all perspectives from the story are available to us because [Dee Dee] is dead and isn't able to tell us what her side of the situation is. I think because of that, we were always working from reality but also working from a lot of abstract information about motherhood or illness or Muchausen by proxy, and then trying to boil it down to an emotional act that a viewer can follow.
You got to talk with Gypsy Rose in your original reporting. How did that influence how you developed that character?
I mean, because it's an interpretation of a crime rather than a work of straight journalism... some of the intimate moments are still abstractions. A lot of our mission for the show was trying to expose the emotional logic in a way that people could follow, which means that we went the way of dramatizing things-when I say "dramatizing," I mean looking at the particulars.
I'm so interested in your background. Is there a part of your legal or journalistic background that you noticed getting folded into this?
I think my disease as a former lawyer is always being able to see all sides of a thing. Sometimes as a lawyer, you're called upon to argue a side of a thing you don't agree with. Journalism can be somewhat continuous of that. If you're a journalist, you're comfortable with the fact that there's always a variety of different perceptions from an event. You're always doing a kind of sifting and preparing for different perspectives.
I think in that sense, both of those things really help in storytelling, too. When you're trying to anchor a character, you're often trying to think, ok, but how did they get here? Why would a character do a thing that we know that they did? I think being able to see things from different perspectives helps me get into different characters' minds. We were trying to give these characters specific and particular feelings so that it didn't feel like we were just going through the motions of a traditional crime story.
This is your first foray into TV, correct?
In my case, it happened in this weird, indirect way. I really enjoyed the collaborative nature of TV because of so many great people working on the show. We were able to have a majority of women in the creative leadership of the show. It was a really great experience. I love my writers. I didn't realize that in having a writer's room, you can talk with people you're working on. Journalism can be a bit solitary that way.
Every character feels so specific. Joey King's portrayal of Gypsy is creepy. It's so good. Did you work with the cast a lot on how to develop those characters?
I worked with them. I mean, actors are always following their own process, but yeah, there's definitely talking with them about characters. Those discussions are ongoing throughout the entire production.
I've seen rumblings about a potential Season Two. Do you have any idea about what that might cover?
There's no Season Two right now, in the sense that Hulu has not picked it up. We're still in post-production, so I think we're focused on getting this story out to the public, and we'll think about it. The Act was designed as an anthology: obviously the title refers to a couple things. Obviously the act of the crime, but also the act that Dee Dee and Gypsy were putting on for the public, so yeah. If there were a Season Two, those are the stories that we would be interested in telling.
There are always stories that I'm seeing where I think, Damn, I wish I could have covered that. Are there any throughout your career where you've thought that?
I think like a good 50 percent of Rachel Aviv's work at The New Yorker. I think there's obviously... I've benefitted from the fact that I've had a lot of good contacts in the long form journalism community. The people who do these kind of stories are often people I already know, or I've supported, or have supported me, so I tend up not feeling the professional jealousy. Usually I'm just like, Wow, this was really great.
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