March 2008ĭee Dee and Gypsy move into a house built for them by Habitat for Humanity. If you haven’t already dived into the first four episodes of The Act (which are streaming now on Hulu) then truly, what are you waiting for? If you have, and are curious to know more, here’s a comprehensive timeline of Dee Dee’s murder, Gypsy’s trial, and the disturbing sequence of events that preceded both. After two decades of being abused and effectively held prisoner, Gypsy came up with an escape plan, enlisting her boyfriend Nick Godejohn to murder Dee Dee. In her 2016 BuzzFeed article detailing the extraordinary case, Michelle Dean-who now serves as co-showrunner and executive producer on The Act-noted that Dee Dee’s behavior was indicative of Munchausen by Proxy syndrome (a variation on Munchausen syndrome, whereby a person feigns or induces symptoms of illness in themselves). Over the first twenty years of her life, Gypsy was subjected to a battery of unnecessary medical procedures, forced to use a wheelchair and feeding tube, and denied any semblance of a normal life: She didn’t attend school past second grade, and never left the house without her mother.

Friends and neighbors knew Gypsy as a sickly, wheelchair-bound child, and Dee Dee as her devoted caregiver, but after Dee Dee’s death the truth emerged: Gypsy was perfectly healthy, but had been forced to pretend otherwise by her mother. And unlike the ribbon used in the episode, Gypsy says she was chained with handcuffs and a dog leash.Hulu’s new true-crime miniseries The Act, starring Patricia Arquette and Joey King, dramatizes the creepier-than-fiction story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who in 2016 was sentenced to ten years in prison for murdering her mother, Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. Phil that after smashing her laptop, Dee Dee threatened to use the hammer on her fingers next. “She would hit me with a coat hanger sometimes.” She goes on to explain what happened when she tried to run away: “She physically chained me to the bed and put chains on the doors.”

“It started to be physical in 2011,” she says. Although this specific fight arose after an attempted escape in reality, the real Gypsy Rose told 20/20that her mom also chained her to the bed for two weeks.

It’s very disturbing for audiences to watch, but it can’t be more traumatic than actually living through it. Things get heated when Gypsy says she’ll just buy another one, and Dee Dee drags her by the arm and ties her to her bed with a blue satin ribbon. Gypsy enters the kitchen where her mom is smashing it with a hammer. Perhaps to show a disturbing parallel with the sexual imagery he sends Gypsy, The Act depicts the gruesome consequences of going against Dee Dee’s wishes when she finds her daughter’s hidden laptop.

What is the true story behind the act