In that first episode, once she gets her hands on a laptop, she starts seeing what an ideal relationship is, what a best friend is, what a boyfriend is-all these images really driving home what she’s been missing. One of the most fascinating elements of this story is the role social media, the Internet, and FOMO play in enhancing Gypsy’s frustration as she gets older. Are you kidding me?’” Here, in her own words, is how King did it.

“When I looked in the mirror after shaving my head,” King told me during a lengthy chat at the Television Critics Association winter press tour last month, “I thought to myself: ‘Holy shit, I’m about to play Gypsy Rose Blanchard for four and a half months of my life. In order to take on such a psychologically and physically demanding role, King leaned heavily on her co-star and on-screen mother: Arquette. In 2015, Gypsy Rose conspired with Nicholas Godejohn (played by American Vandal breakout Calum Worthy) to kill her mother.įor anyone who has seen footage of the real Gypsy Rose, King’s performance is a chameleonic revelation. For this project, King had to tackle almost a triple role-playing the deeply sick girl Gypsy Rose pretended to be, the actually sick girl her mother ensured she’d be, and the healthy girl she dreamed of being. The con involved some acting on Gypsy’s part, but Dee Dee also kept her daughter sick using unneeded medication. As outlined in the 2017 HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, as well as Michelle Dean’s in-depth reporting for BuzzFeed, Dee Dee (played on-screen by Patricia Arquette) was engaged in a long-term con job to fake a variety of illnesses for her daughter, in order to benefit both from the sympathy and fiscally lucrative charities that supported Gypsy Rose. The story of Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee Blanchard is much stranger than fiction.

But for her latest and most ambitious role yet, in Hulu’s The Act, King had to transform into the real-life figure of Gypsy Rose Blanchard-a teenage girl who was grievously abused by her mother, Dee Dee, and is currently serving time for orchestrating Dee Dee’s murder. Though only 19 years old, the Los Angeles native has been working steadily in film and television for 12 years, attracting attention for her preternatural maturity-which allowed her to hold her own opposite acting heavyweights in Season 1 of FX’s Fargo-and her arresting features, which stood out even in the gloomy prison pit of The Dark Knight Rises, where King played a young version of Marion Cotillard’s villainess. Anyone who pays attention to burgeoning talent in Hollywood has had their eye on Joey King for some time.

True story of the act