Originally published on E! Online
Vili Fualaau calls out to the filmmakers of “May December”.
The ex-husband of deceased sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau shares his thoughts on the film, which was inspired by the former couple real and controversial romance. According to Fualaau, no one working on the film ever contacted him for advice.
“If they had contacted me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece,” the 40-year-old told Hollywood journalist in an interview published on January 4. “Instead, they chose to rip off my original story.”
Fualaau continued: “I am offended by the whole project and the lack of respect towards me, who lived a true story and still lives it.”
In “May December”, Julianne Moore and Charles Melton plays a married couple, Gracie and Joe, whose relationship made tabloid headlines because it began when she was 36 and he was 13. Natalie Portman plays an actress, Elizabeth, who is preparing to play Moore's character in a film. She visits the couple to research her role.
E! News reached out to representatives for Melton, the film's director Todd Haynes and studio Netflix for comment on Fualaau's remarks and has not heard back.
LétourneauA teacher in Washington state, was 34 years old and Fualaau was 12 years old and a student in his sixth grade class when they began their true love story. She was convicted of second-degree rape based on their actual relationship. She served more than seven years in prison after being convicted of second-degree rape and was required to register as a sex offender upon her release.
She and Fualaau, who shared two daughters, married in 2005 and divorced in 2019. Létourneau died of cancer at age 58 the next year. Currently, the former couple's youngest daughter, Georgia Fualaau, is pregnant with her first child.
If “Mai Décembre” is inspired by the Létourneau scandal, screenwriter Samy Burch had previously stressed that the film was not necessarily trying to tell their story.
“It's certainly the seed of the problem, the problem as a whole, but it was important to me that it wasn't the story of Mary Kay Letourneau,” she told the Hollywood journalist in November. “It wasn't the same details – I certainly don't want anyone to assume that we're trying to say that all of these conversations happened behind closed doors, that's not the case. It was just a starting point and a way something like that made sense to me emotionally.”
Haynes added that “there were times when it became very, very helpful to be very specific about the research and we learned things from that relationship, even in the sense that it differed from the relationship between Gracie and Joe in our film.”
Additionally, Moore reiterated that “May December” “is not the story of Mary Kay Letourneau.”