The three C’s of current TV documentary programming are celebrity, crime and cults, and the new Lifetime docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard checks off the first two with ruthless, pinpoint efficiency. The subject, a young woman who arranged for the murder of her deranged, abusive mother in 2015, has become a media sensation, the subject of a previous dramatic miniseries (Hulu’s The Act, from 2019) and now a TikTok sensation about to release her own memoir. Let there be no underestimating the public appetite for such material, which also includes another popular ingredient, the monstrous family member (see also ID’s pair of recent Natalia Grace docuseries and HBO’s relatively tasteful Great Photo, Lovely Life).
Folks seem to love themselves some Gypsy, a young Louisiana woman with a high voice and seemingly guileless personality. Sitting for the filmmakers in her prison khakis on the eve of her parole hearing, which, as we’re told ad infinitum over the course of five episodes, she really, really hopes goes well, she weaves the sordid tale of her late mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, a smothering woman who allegedly handcuffed Gypsy to a bed for two weeks and had her daughter’s legal age falsely and officially changed to make Gypsy and everyone else think she was four years younger (more shades of Natalia Grace, whose adoptive parents had her legal birth date adjusted up, rather than down).
But wait, there’s more. Dee Dee Blanchard seems to have had a psychological disorder called Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which a parent or other caregiver seeks attention from medical professionals by causing or fabricating signs or symptoms of illness in a child. As Gypsy grew up, her mom apparently concocted stories of leukemia, muscular dystrophy, and seizure disorder, among other ailments. Dee Dee worked financial scams involving Habitat for Humanity, Make-A-Wish, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Gypsy was her meal ticket. But she was more than that. She was a means of ultimate control — a subservient for life, often confined to a wheelchair under false pretenses, dressed in princess costumes and tiaras and essentially transformed into a perpetual little girl. Gypsy also claims she was sexually molested by her grandfather, whose tepid on-camera denials do him no favors.
Captured in umpteen old stills – it takes a lot of photos and reenactments to fill up six episodes – Gypsy flashes a toothy smile that suggests nervous terror as much as joy. Speaking on camera from prison (she also took part in a series of telephone jailhouse interviews), she looks like a completely different person, one who has had a bit to eat – she was often starved growing up – and fairly comfortable in her own skin. She notes the series’ key irony: She found a degree of previously unknown freedom by going to prison. Without soft-pedaling the fact that murder is murder and is never a good thing, even when you convince your online boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to do it – Thou Shalt Not Kill and so forth – the filmmakers make it pretty easy to see why Gypsy has captured the public imagination. She even got married while she was in prison, to a guy who doesn’t seem like a psychopath; the series treats this development with sympathy and good humor.
It’s remarkable and unsettling how easily Gypsy seems to have fallen through all the cracks, especially in the medical profession. “I’d say I’m sorry I failed you,” her former pediatrician says, when asked what he’d tell her now. The series makes clear that Dee Dee Blanchard was a master manipulator of people and systems. This all makes it easier to root for Gypsy.
But there’s also a strong current of schadenfreude and emotional masochism involved in watching The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, especially coming on the heels of like-minded docs and series. We can tsk and shudder with each shocking revelation, and feel relief that at least our families weren’t that bad. It’s hard to blame her for cashing in on her story; it is, after all, her story. We’re merely the voyeurs who keep eating it up. This part could form the public’s confession. We like trauma when it’s not ours, and when it’s provided from the safe distance of our screens.
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