Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore respond to 'May December' inspiration Vili Fualaau's criticism
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are responding to criticism from "May December" inspiration and Mary Kay Letourneau's ex-husband, Vili Fualaau.
Moore said she was "sorry" to hear Fualaau wasn't a fan of the movie in an interview with Entertainment Tonight on Sunday. But she asserted that the Golden Globe-nominated film is an "original story" and not a biopic following the real-life controversial relationship.
"I'm very sorry that he feels that way," said Moore, 63. "I mean, (director Todd Haynes) was always very clear when we were working on this movie that this was an original story, this was a story about these characters. So that's how we looked at it too. This was our document, we created these characters from the page and together."
Fualaau spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the film, sharing that no one involved in the film ever reached out to him.
"I'm still alive and well. If they had reached out to me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece. Instead, they chose to do a ripoff of my original story," he said in an interview published last week.
The film follows TV star Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) as she travels to Savannah, Georgia, to shadow Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), whom she is set to play in an upcoming movie. Decades earlier, when she was in her 30s, Gracie had been convicted of seducing and raping 13-year-old Joe (Charles Melton), whom she later married and started a family with. As their now-grown kids prepare to graduate high school, Joe begins to process his trauma while Elizabeth attempts in vain to understand Gracie.
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In real life, Letourneau, a suburban Washington teacher, raped and later married her former sixth-grade student, Fualaau. The case drew massive media attention as Letourneau, then 34, and Fualaau, then 12, were found in a minivan in June 1996 at a marina outside Seattle. Letourneau would become pregnant months later.
She pleaded guilty to child rape in 1997 and served only a few months in prison on the condition that she have no further contact with Fualaau. Soon after, she was caught having sex with the teen again and became pregnant with their second child. A judge later sentenced her to serve more than seven years.
In 2005, Letourneau and Fualaau married after Letourneau's jail time was up, but Fualaau filed for separation in 2017. Letourneau died of cancer in 2020 at age 58.
Portman, 42, echoed Moore's reaction, saying the couple "influenced" the film but is "its own story."
"I'm so sorry to hear that," she told Entertainment Tonight. "It's not based on them, it's, you know, obviously their story influenced the culture that we all grew up in and influenced the idea. But it's fictional characters that are really brought to life by Julianne Moore and Charles Melton so beautifully, and yeah. It's its own story. It's not meant to be a biopic."
"I'm offended by the entire project and the lack of respect given to me — who lived through a real story and is still living it," Fualaau told The Hollywood Reporter.
Beyond the similar circumstances in the teacher-student relationship and portrayal in the film, there are other similarities. Both men are Asian/Pacific Islander — Fualaau is Samoan, Joe in the film is half-Korean — and some dialogue in the Netflix movie is lifted from a 7 News Australia interview with Letourneau and Fualaau.
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"I love movies — good movies," Fualaau said. "And I admire ones that capture the essence and complications of real-life events. You know, movies that allow you to see or realize something new every time you watch them."
He continued: "Those kinds of writers and directors — someone who can do that — would be perfect to work with, because my story is not nearly as simple as this movie (portrays)."
At the Los Angeles premiere in November, Haynes acknowledged that the Letourneau case helped inform the film. "There were times when it became very, very helpful to get very specific about the research, and we learned things from that relationship," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Contributing: Patrick Ryan and Ryan W. Miller
Who was Mary Kay Letourneau,the former teacher who raped her sixth-grade student and then married him?