On Tuesday, Gypsy Rose Blanchard told reporters that her optimism kept her from deteriorating during her eight year prison sentence.
Blanchard was released this past week after serving nearly a decade for her role in the murder of her abusive mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who had successfully convinced their community that Gypsy Rose was suffering from medical conditions she didn’t actually have.
Fans accidentally make her time in prison worse
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According to her e-book, also released this week, Blanchard had some brushes with true existential horror. During her sentence, after a fan posted on social media that they believed Blanchard shouldn’t be in prison and that they wished they could break her out, Blanchard was placed in solitary confinement, she writes.
Blanchard said that prison officials used her time in solitary to go through her things, looking for any evidence that she was plotting an escape herself.
How she “started having faith again” after some “grim” moments
“I think the only time that I was ever not optimistic about my fate was while I was in County Jail,” Blanchard said.
Her boyfriend at the time, Nicholas Godejohn, had just stabbed Dee Dee Blanchard to death while Gypsy hid in another room, an act the couple had plotted extensively.
“I lost faith at one point, and it was really grim,” Blanchard continued. “But then as soon as I knew that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison and getting out of prison fairly young, I started having faith again.”
During a press conference held by Lifetime for the new six-hour special The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the social media sensation—fans have followed her every move post-incarceration with rapt interest—also fielded questions about her experience behind bars and her plans for the future.
“I spent eight and a half years in prison, so that was a long time for me to at least make some mistakes, learn from them,” she said.
But she was still battling a worsening addiction to opioids
Last week, Blanchard told GMA that she was high on painkillers when she made the decision to participate in her mother’s murder.
Blanchard’s addiction to opioids worsened while she was imprisoned, she told People last week, and made an effort to halt her substance abuse before being released. “I didn't want to come out of prison being an addict anymore,” she said. “So I wanted to come out of prison a new woman, and I knew that it was something that I had to do. It was something I had to get over.”
Gypsy lived in the “penthouse of prison”
Describing her prison quarters, Blanchard said on Tuesday, “we had a bunk bed on this side, a bunk bed on this side, a nice little table in the middle, and we had keys to our rooms. In the wing we had two microwaves. If you lived on the honor dorm, you got to have big round tables in the day room with board games and things like that for us to do.
“If you live on the honor wing, it’s, I call it the penthouse of prison,” she added. “It’s really nice, and I lived there for a couple of years.”
In prison, she learned how to do things herself for the first time
“I came into prison with a second-grade education,” Blanchard, who was 24 when she was sentenced, told A&E last week. “So I studied and got to build my vocabulary. And I got to watch TV—different educational shows.”
“What my mom taught me was not much,” Blanchard added to People this week, discussing her state of mind upon entering prison. “I didn’t know how to use a tampon, and another inmate who’s like a mother figure taught me how to use one. I [was] in prison around women who’ve been around the block, so I’ve been able to gain some positives from the experience.”
“I met Gypsy seven years ago, and when I first met her, she was just starting to come into her own,” Melissa Moore, executive producer of the special, added on Tuesday. “She had gone through the initial trauma of going to jail. I remember she told me she would go up to people and say, ‘Do you want to be my friend?’”
She doesn’t think her mother “deserved” to die
“A lot of the girls in prison said, ‘Girl, I would’ve done the same thing,’” referring to her mother’s killing, Blanchard told Nick Viall on his podcast this week. “It makes me cringe. I hate that.”
“I’m hearing these words like, your mother was a whatever, she deserved it,” Blanchard said. “And I’m like, no, she didn’t. I think the one thing that people think is that I hated my mom. And I’m like, no, I love my mom. I just wanted out of that situation. I wanted out of that home.”
After everything she went through, Blanchard is embracing assimilation
Looking towards the future, Blanchard said that although her heavily-scrutinized life is currently too hectic for a 9-5 job, she wouldn’t rule out taking a regular gig down the line.
“I like to do people’s hair, I like to do makeup, I’m a total girly girl,” she said. “So, you know, I might want to do something in retail, at a shop that I really like and enjoy.”
