When Michelle Carter was 17, she wielded her cellphone like a weapon and, over text message, successfully urged her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, to take his own life. Known as the “texting-suicide case,” Roy’s death and Carter’s subsequent conviction on charges of involuntary manslaughter became a true-crime phenomenon. Now, a new Hulu limited series called The Girl From Plainville attempts to explore the gray areas of the case and parse the complicated psyches of the teens involved.
In the show’s first full-length trailer, released Wednesday, The Great’s Elle Fanning convincingly transforms into Carter, with the help of some painted-on eyebrows. “Conrad’s dead,” Fanning’s Carter tells her parents, overcome with emotion and seeming disbelief. Her mother’s reply is telling. “Who’s Conrad?” she asks, her forehead creased with confusion.
The trailer proceeds to tease the mysteries and inconsistencies surrounding Carter and Roy’s relationship. Carter paints a picture of the teens as star-crossed lovers, calling Roy (Colton Ryan) the love of her life and invoking Romeo and Juliet (“But you do know what happens in the end?” Ryan asks). Clips of the two smiling on a bike ride along the boardwalk and locking eyes across the room at a school dance seem to support her version of events.
But then there are the shots of text messages from Carter on Roy’s phone: “Are you gonna do it? You gotta do it.” Flashbacks to Roy in a hospital bed attest to his demonstrated history of depression and suicide attempts. Roy’s mother, played by Chloë Sevigny, is suspicious of Carter from the start. “Strange that you’re someone so close to him when we never met,” she says to Fanning in a subtle yet spot-on Boston accent.
When real-life Michelle Carter was indicted in 2015, a case like hers was unheard of. It garnered national attention and opened up a conversation about criminal responsibility in the smartphone era. In the trailer, the district attorney, played by Craig Anton, initially dismisses Carter’s actions as “just texts,” not even glancing up from his desk. “With due respect,” answers Detective Scott Gordon (Kelly AuCoin), “those are messed-up texts.”
From showrunners Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus, The Girl From Plainville premieres on Hulu on March 29.
