My mom made me wear a diaper. ' … That was another control thing. That her mother told her that she couldn't use women's sanitary products because she was 'small in that area.
"She physically chained me to the bed, and put bells on the doors, and told anybody that I probably would have trusted that I was going through a phase," Gypsy said during a 20/20 interview. Dee Dee Blanchard tied her daughter Gypsy Rose to the bed to punish her. She also starved her at the same time.
As Dee Dee bathes her like a baby and tries to get her to sing "I'll Be There," Gypsy is livid. And immediately after treating her like a literal child, Dee Dee is angry right back because Gypsy has started her period early. The offense was apparently that Gypsy didn't immediately alert her mother to this fact.
Dee Dee Blanchard kept Gypsy's head shaved and forced her to use a wheelchair even though there was nothing wrong with her legs. Dee Dee Blanchard also convinced a physician to put a feeding tube into Gypsy and would tell people that Gypsy was mentally incompetent.
YouTubeGypsy Rose Blanchard on a trip to Disney World, which was sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2010, Dee Dee was telling everyone that Gypsy Rose was 14, but she was actually 19 years old. By then, she knew she wasn't as sick as her mother claimed — as she was well aware that she could walk.
According to the American Dental Association, dental extractions occur when the teeth are severely decayed, damaged, or diseased. It's unclear why Gypsy's teeth decayed, but it's likely a combination of poor dental hygiene, malnutrition, and the many unnecessary medications she was taking.
There was no sign of her daughter, Gypsy Rose, who, according to Blanchard, had chronic conditions including leukemia, asthma, and muscular dystrophy, and who had the "mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage" as the result of premature birth.
From there, Dee Dee decides to have all of Gypsy's teeth removed after dentists find one rotting away in her mouth. Gypsy is devastated, but the real, full story of how this happened is even worse.
As for her teeth, they did rot and were subsequently removed, likely due to the removal of Gypsy's salivary glands. According to Gypsy, her mother used a numbing agent to numb her gums, causing her to drool, which helped convince doctors to remove the glands.
When she turned 5, Dee Dee declared Gypsy could no longer walk, because she had muscular dystrophy and epilepsy. She put her daughter in a wheelchair.
She was also seen expressing immediate regret at the murder of her mother, and was desperately attempting to cover her up. However, in an interview following her arrest, Gypsy didn't think she was going to be caught at all – in fact, she thought their entire plan was faultless.
In addition to being told she had leukemia, muscular dystrophy and epilepsy, Gypsy Rose Blanchard never even knew her real age.
In the trailer, Dee Dee says Gypsy was born in 1995, to which Gypsy responds, “I thought you said I was born in 1993?” Later, Gypsy discovers she was actually born even earlier when she finds her insurance card that states her birthday as July 1991.
It's very disturbing for audiences to watch, but it can't be more traumatic than actually living through it. Although this specific fight arose after an attempted escape in reality, the real Gypsy Rose told 20/20 that her mom also chained her to the bed for two weeks. “It started to be physical in 2011,” she says.
The meeting did not go as planned—Dee Dee hated Godejohn—but Gypsy was still able to sneak away and lose her virginity to Godejohn in a bathroom stall, according to her testimony at his trial.
I've broken it down for you, below. Fair warning, if you're not familiar with the story, there are some spoilers. How much did Gypsy Rose know that Dee Dee was lying about her health? According to Gypsy Rose, she knew she could walk and eat real food, but that was it.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard, now 28, is believed to have been a victim of Munchausen by proxy – a form of abuse in which the parent or guardian exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy.
The Feeding Tube
In real life, Gypsy did actually have a feeding tube inserted into her body, according to Michelle's Dean's article for BuzzFeed News, which served as the basis for "The Act."
To be brief: In June 2015, Gypsy conspired with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to murder her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who it turned out had made Gypsy a lifelong victim of her Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
When Gypsy's teeth rotted — perhaps due to her medications, missing salivary glands or neglect — they were pulled out. Yet the truth was that Gypsy could walk, didn't need a feeding tube and did not have cancer. Her head was bald only because her mother shaved off her hair.
King spoke about reaching for the clippers not once, but three times for her on-screen roles, going bald most recently to play Gypsy Rose Blanchard in Hulu's The Act when she was 19. "I would absolutely do it again," she says of lopping off her locks. "I've never felt more free or more in tune with my beauty.
According to Macelli, Gypsy Rose claims that Hulu's show is "inaccurate," especially when it comes to the portrayals of her sex life, which Gypsy Rose says was "dramatized to make her seem like a nymphomaniac." The subject of the TV series added that her mother tying her to her bed (which happens multiple times in The ...
The Act shows a scene in which Gypsy Rose Blanchard wins an award for Child of the Year. In real life, Gypsy did win a similar award, based on her positive attitude and charity efforts in the face of her medical conditions.
She was 23 when Dee Dee was killed, but had been told by her mother that she was just a teenager with the mental capacity of a 7-year-old.
— Gypsy Rose Blanchard has tied the knot with Louisianan Ryan Scott Anderson despite still serving her 10-year prison sentence. The Livingston County Recorder of Deeds verified the marriage certificate between Blanchard, 30, and Anderson, 36, on July 21, 2022. Is there any point in medical marijuana in Missouri now?