Vili Fualaau, the ex-husband of Mary Kay Letourneau, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for raping Fualaau when he was 12 and she was 34, is speaking out against the new film May December. Fualaau’s life story—he fathered two children with, and later married, Letourneau, his former sixth grade teacher—was specifically cited by the filmmakers as inspiration.
In an interview published on Thursday, Fualaau told The Hollywood Reporter that no one from the production ever reached out to him. “I’m still alive and well,” Fualaau, now 40, said. “If they had reached out to me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece. Instead, they chose to do a ripoff of my original story.”
He added: “I’m offended by the entire project and the lack of respect given to me—who lived through a real story and is still living it.”
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Director Todd Haynes’ critically acclaimed film centers on a couple with dark beginnings: the Letourneau-esque Gracie (Julianne Moore) initiated a sexual relationship with Joe (Charles Melton) when he was in seventh grade. Years later, May December finds Gracie and Joe married with a couple of kids, but with the shame that their affair caused constantly hanging over them. The film also stars Natalie Portman as an actress observing the couple’s relationship.
Asked by The Daily Beast last May how much he thought about the Letourneau story while making the film, Haynes replied, “I really started by pushing that to the side and just being like, OK, let’s bear down on the specific choices and the distinctions that Samy Burch’s script makes from the Mary Kay Letourneau story.”
“But there was no way ultimately to not,” Haynes added.
Indeed, the film bears striking similarities to the story of Letourneau and Fualaau, including recreating real tabloid covers in the film and taking bits of dialogue from a TV interview with the real-life couple. Fualaau and Joe both fathered children while their abuser was in prison for child rape, and both later married them. Both Fualaau and Joe are also of Asian/Pacific Islander descent.
Ultimately, Fualaau told THR that he felt the film exploited his story.
“I love movies—good movies,” Fualaau said. “And I admire ones that capture the essence and complications of real-life events. You know, movies that allow you to see or realize something new every time you watch them.
“Those kinds of writers and directors—someone who can do that—would be perfect to work with, because my story is not nearly as simple as this movie [portrays].”
