Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’ on Lifetime, A Firsthand Account Of The Abuse Victim-Turned-Convicted Murderer

Gypsy Rose Blanchard made headlines last month for her recent release from prison after spending seven years locked up after the murder of her own mother, Dee Dee. The new Lifetime docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard is a thorough examination of Gypsy’s life, from her childhood as the victim of her mother’s Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, to the murder that landed her in prison. Though Dee Dee was the murder victim, the series focuses on Gypsy’s ordeal which began in infancy, and paints a picture of a young life that was essentially stolen from her as the result of her mother’s controlling and abusive behavior.

THE PRISON CONFESSIONS OF GYPSY ROSE BLANCHARD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Dressed in a tan prison uniform, Gypsy Rose Blanchard takes a seat in front of the camera. Onscreen text reveals that in 24 hours, the inmate will face a parole board to learn whether she’ll receive an early release from her 10-year prison sentence handed to her for plotting her mother’s murder.

The Gist: In 2015 when she was 24 years old, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was arrested for the murder of her mother Dee Dee. In 2016, she plead guilty to second-degree murder and received a ten-year prison sentence. In 2023, after serving seven years, she was released early, but before that happened, she sat for several interviews while still behind bars, revealing many new details about the way Dee Dee abused and manipulated her, which led to Gypsy asking her then-boyfriend Nick Godejohn to kill Dee Dee. This six-part series blends archival footage of Gypsy and Dee Dee, along with recent interviews with Gypsy and her close friends and family, to paint a clearer picture of what Gypsy endured at the hands of her mother, who suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Dee Dee forced Gypsy to live as if she had cancer, muscular dystrophy, and seizure disorders, among other ailments, while duping family and doctors, all for attention and sympathy as well as to control her daughter. Eventually she even got people to believe Gypsy was mentally incapacitated, and she imprisoned her daughter in their home so she couldn’t escape.

Starting in Gypsy’s childhood, we learn that her father was just a teenager when his relationship with Dee Dee resulted in pregnancy. He pulled away and, though he wanted to remain in Gypsy’s life, he quickly remarried and wasn’t always in close proximity to his daughter. (As a result, he would hear about her many new ailments but couldn’t do much to confirm them or help with them.) Dee Dee would apartment hop from place to place, often passing bad checks or scamming people, and her transient lifestyle made it easy to keep Gypsy’s real issues hidden from family, who all seemed to know she was exaggerating a lot of Gypsy’s symptoms. It seems hard to believe that Dee Dee could convince so many people of Gypsy’s fake ailments (including doctors, some of whom are interviewed here and seem remorseful over the fact that they didn’t do more to investigate Dee Dee), and without Dee Dee here to speak for herself, we have to assume she was very good at manipulation and lying, or else why would anyone believe her?

Even in light of the violent way that her mother was murdered, it seems that there’s no real sympathy for Dee Dee here. The woman was clearly mentally ill, but she was also a child abuser, making her a complicated and controversial figure, but ultimately, the series only focuses on Gypsy’s well-being, and seems to want to will into existence a happy future for her.
This is a much more detailed version of Gypsy’s story than the 2017 film Mommy Dead and Dearest, with a lot more chilling and damning information revealed, not just about Dee Dee but with regard to Gypsy’s whole family, but given what she’s been through, Gypsy is riveting to watch throughout, as are the interviews with everyone who is close to her but were unable to stop her mother.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Mommy Dead and Dearest is the aforementioned documentary about the Blanchard family and Gypsy’s ordeal that came out while Blanchard was still in prison. Hulu’s The Act, a limited series that stars Joey King and Patricia Arquette in an Emmy-winning performance as Dee Dee Blanchard, is also based on Gypsy’s life.

Our Take: The six episodes are a comprehensive story of Gypsy’s life, from her childhood under her mother’s care, the lead-up to her mother’s murder, and her life in prison. While it feels like it could have been shaved down a little (six episodes seems daunting), there’s so much to unpack, from the origins of the abuse to Gypsy’s realization that her mother’s death was her only road to freedom, that it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of filler to pad it out. It’s such a complex story, and Gypsy is given the space to tell it thoughtfully.

Now in her early 30’s, Gypsy speaks with a surprising amount of clarity and honesty about her experiences and she has an impressively healthy perspective on life now that she’s free of her mother’s abuse. (At one point, she says that the happiest memory in her life is her first day in prison, when she realized was the first time in her life that she had the freedom to be herself. If you consider the 24 years she spend under her mother’s constant, abusive supervision and the subsequent time she spent in prison, it’s wild to think that in reality, she’s only truly been free for three weeks.) She speaks about being in therapy, and you get the sense – hopefully it’s real and not just bullshit – that she has never been anything but a victim.

Where the series could have pushed itself is in examining how everyone let this happen. There is an element to that, specifically focusing on the inaction of Gypsy’s doctors, but even after six episodes, I was left wondering how so many adults could allow this child to suffer for so long – there’s no clear answer there, but it still feels unbelievable that it happened.

Sex and Skin: There is talk of sexual abuse.

Parting Shot: “When we thought we’d heard it all, we didn’t,” Gypsy’s stepmother says, hinting that the early years of Gypsy’s life, living her mother’s lie, were only the beginning of Dee Dee’s deceptions.

Performance Worth Watching: Almost all of the people in Gypsy’s life who are interviewed, from her childhood pediatrician to her step-mother Kristy Blanchard, who is one of the most supportive people in Gypsy’s life, come across as both empathetic and disgusted by the way Gypsy was treated. Which is why is makes it so fascinating that they were all basically powerless to help her. Watching as they learn new details of the extent of Dee Dee’s deception is one of the more riveting parts of the series.

Memorable Dialogue: “Gypsy was Dee’s daughter, but also her prisoner,” Gypsy’s step-mother, Kristy, explains in the first episode of the series. Gypsy herself has even said that actual prison is preferable to the life she was living as her mother’s victim, and that line that Kristy speaks is a sad and succinct way of describing the state of Gypsy’s young life.

Our Call: STREAM IT! The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard is one of the more tragic true crime stories in recent years, and it’s covered here with empathy in an effort to paint Gypsy not just as a victim but as a woman who is nothing like the child her mother tried to portray her as.