Dee Dee’s obsessiveness over the health of her baby picks up almost as soon as Gypsy is born and continues throughout her infancy. In episode 6, which picks up right after Dee Dee has been murdered, flashback scenes attempt to piece together the Blanchards’ early days. The Act explores how Dee Dee became abusive toward Gypsy by bringing parts of Dee Dee’s past to the fore. She frequently switched doctors to leave behind a messy medical trail that would be difficult to piece together. Having once worked as a nurse’s aide, Dee Dee was familiar with enough medical terms to convince people she knew what she was talking about. Because Dee Dee is dead, it’s impossible to officially offer a diagnosis, but her behavior fell in line with many signs of the disorder.
The lengths to which Dee Dee goes to invent illness in her daughter points to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. She was homeschooled the show depicts her coloring and watching cartoons in an early scene, and she dresses up in princess costumes. Gypsy told BuzzFeed that Dee Dee also maintained that Gypsy had cancer and that she was told her medication was for cancer.īeyond the physical ailments, Gypsy, both in The Act and in real life, was made to act like she had the brain development of a child - even though she was 23 when she was eventually arrested (confused about the own details of her life, Gypsy told police she was 19). Dee Dee claimed Gypsy had leukemia when she was young and that she’d had health problems since she was a baby. Dee Dee’s list of her daughter’s diagnoses seemed endless and included epilepsy, sleep apnea, eye issues, muscular dystrophy and chromosomal defects, according to BuzzFeed. Such claims dogged Gypsy’s real life, too. Gypsy’s sickly appearance also goes a long way in stopping any intrusive questions from curious onlookers. In the show, Arquette’s Dee Dee seems able to convince people of Gypsy’s many illnesses just by speaking with an authoritative tone to strangers and doctors. In The Act, Gypsy is bald, gets around in a wheelchair, eats through a feeding tube, has a severe sugar allergy, has had her salivary glands removed and suffers from epilepsy, paraplegia, a heart murmur and anemia, among other issues. How did Dee Dee fabricate Gypsy’s illnesses?
Here’s what’s fact and what’s fiction in The Act.
THE ACT ON HULU SERIES
The series premiered on Hulu on March 20 and has garnered largely positive reviews. The Act, which opens with a 911 call from neighbors concerned about the Blanchards, stars Patricia Arquette and Joey King as the mother-daughter pair. She also profited off the fake illnesses through charity trips and donations, including the house they lived in, which was provided by Habitat for Humanity. Dee Dee - who is thought to have had Munchausen syndrome by proxy - had fabricated the whole thing to keep her daughter under control through physical and psychological abuse. Gypsy, it turned out, had not truly been sick. Though it was a relief when Gypsy was found alive following her mother’s murder, a complicated tale soon emerged.
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