If you watched the 2017 HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, you already know that the tale of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her mother Dee Dee is as wild a true crime as one can get. Now, the new trailer for Hulu's The Act reveals the craziest details of this Munchausen by proxy tragedy-turned-murder, with Joey King and Patricia Arquette as the mother and daughter duo.
In The Act, Arquette plays "doting" mother Dee Dee, who wants to protect daughter Gypsy Rose (King) at all costs. Dee Dee claims that Gypsy Rose has a slew of medical conditions, telling a doctor in the trailer that Gypsy Rose suffers from paraplegia, epilepsy, heart murmurs, and an allergy from sugar, to name a few. So, later on in the trailer, when Dee Dee smacks a cupcake out of Gypsy Rose's hand, it's only seen by onlookers as a concerned mother caring for her ill child.
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Then, things get weird. Doctors become suspicious of Gypsy Rose's so-called conditions — though no one becomes more suspect than Gypsy Rose herself, especially when she realizes that her mom has been lying about Gypsy Rose's age for years to make her daughter seem younger.
When Gypsy Rose meets a boy online (Calum Worthy), she thinks she has found her "prince charming." It's this relationship that ultimately brings the end of Gypsy Rose's captivity with Dee Dee...and lands her in prison for Dee Dee's murder.
This isn't the only time the strange case of Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee received a fictional treatment. Lifetime's 2019 movie Love You To Death was loosely based on the Blanchards' story.
Check out the trailer for The Act below.
The Act hits Hulu March 20.