Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman's new film May December has already achieved considerable Oscar buzz, with powerful performances from the two actors and Riverdale star Charles Melton. But, the plot of the film was partially inspired by a rather controversial tabloid story – the case of Mary Kay Letourneau.
While there's been much conversation about how close May December's plot is to this shocking real-life story (more on that later), some of the similarities are undeniable.
May December follows the story of married couple Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton), who are 20 years apart in age and have three children they're about to send off to university. The scandal is this: their relationship began when Joe was thirteen and was working for Gracie at a local pet shop. Gracie went to prison for statutory rape, as did Mary Kay Letourneau in real life, back in the '90s.
The dynamic that underpins their story, relationship and marriage is called into question when an actor (Natalie Portman) visits them for research, as she is set to play Gracie in a film based on their story. Meta, right?
Back in 1997, Mary Kay Letourneau was a Seattle school teacher who made headlines (particularly in the US) for being convicted of raping her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. She was 34 and married with children at the time. They had two children together before he turned 15, one of which was born in prison (Julianne's character Gracie also gives birth behind bars, a story covered heavily by the tabloids). When Mary was released from prison, the couple fought a no-contact court order and married in 2005, separating in 2019. Mary died in 2020.
Mary has spoken publicly before, including her decision to violate parole to see Vili. "He called, and I came,” she said in an interview with Oprah in 1998. “I think, with all certainty, this young man is the love of my life, or I wouldn’t have done this to my children.”
"Am I sorry he’s the father of my children, and that we’re married and this is the man of my life?" she said in a 2018 documentary about her. “No, I am not.”
The age gap between Gracie and Joe is slightly smaller, with Joe being portrayed as slightly older (but still underage) when their affair began. While the Letourneau case took place in Washington, May December is set in Savannah and, of course, the age-gap affair began in a pet shop onscreen, not in a school. But still, the parallels between the two stories are very close.
Let's make one thing clear – the film itself is fictional, and isn't a biopic of Mary Kay Letourneau. But, that said, May December's writer Samy Burch has admitted that the story was “seed” in the story of the film – a “jumping off point” for something larger she wanted to say.
“Certainly that’s the seed of it, the big picture thing, but it was important to me that this wasn’t the Mary Kay Letourneau story,” writer Samy Burch told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Thursday. “It wasn’t the same details — I certainly don’t want anyone to assume that we’re trying to say all these conversations happened behind closed doors, it’s not. This was just a jumping off point and a way that something like this made sense to me emotionally.”
The dark psychological drama examines the scandalous relationship between an older woman and a much younger man.
Samy also wanted to emphasise the impact of tabloid culture, particularly in the '90s and how it fed into the production of biopics and the notoriety of these stories.
"I really wanted a fictional story that dealt with this tabloid culture of the '90s that has kind of seemingly led into this true-crime biopic world we're in now, and kind of question that transition and why we want to keep recreating these stories," Samy said. “That was the real jumping-off point for me... All of these stories like this that are in the ether are just completely embedded in everyone's cultural history.”
Julianne Moore herself – who plays Gracie, whose plotline follows Mary Kay Letourneau's true-life experiences pretty closely – has echoed that “this is not the story of Mary Kay Letourneau”.
But the seeds of the story have certainly been sown across the movie's DNA. Director Todd Haynes added that he initially tried to keep away from the Letourneau story, “but then there were times when it became very, very helpful to get very specific about the research and we learned things from that relationship, even in the ways that it differed from the relationship between Gracie and Joe in our film.”
Will Ferrell, a producer on the film, has commented that due to the time passed since the drama of the Letourneau's story, May December is about something more.
“There’s been so much time and distance from when [the real story] actually happened that it really ends up being a story about desperate, unhappy people and how one decision of narcissism affects so many other people and changes their lives forever,” he said.
May December is currently showing in UK cinemas and will air on Sky Cinema on 1 December.
