Vili Fualaau, the ex-husband of Mary Kay Letourneau in a tabloid-famous statutory rape case, has spoken out against a critically acclaimed film inspired by the scandal.
May December, an awards season contender released by Netflix, tells the story of an actor, Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), who observes the relationship between Gracie (Julianne Moore) and her husband, Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), whom she seduced when she was 36 and he was 13. The film is loosely based on the real-life events of Mary Kay Letourneau, a 34-year-old teacher who victimized her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, in 1996, becoming a tabloid fixture.
The film bears striking similarities to the story of Letourneau and Fualaau, which the screenwriter Samy Burch cited as her inspiration for the script. The director Todd Haynes recreates real tabloid covers in the film and includes a pivotal conversation (“who was the boss?”) taken directly from a news interview with the real-life couple. Fualaau and Joe are both of Asian/Pacific Islander descent (Joe is Korean, while Fualaau is Samoan); both fathered children while their abuser was in prison for child rape; both later married them.
Given the parallels, Fualaau, now 40 and living in the Seattle area, told the Hollywood Reporter that he was disappointed that Burch, Haynes and Melton – an awards season favorite nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance – did not consult him on the project. “I’m still alive and well,” he 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.
“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,” he added.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Fualaau felt the film was yet another Hollywood or media product that exploited his life story. He said he would be open to a film that incorporated elements from his life – he and Letourneau separated in 2019, and he was by her bedside when she died of cancer in 2020. He went on to father a third child in a different relationship, and is about to become a grandfather, through his younger daughter with Letourneau.
But he did not consider May December to be a thoughtful portrayal of his story. “I love movies – good movies. 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,” he said. “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].”
It is not uncommon for Hollywood projects to take creative liberties with real-life stories, and in recent months, the May December team have distanced themselves from the Letourneau case. “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,” Burch said at the film’s Los Angeles premiere. “This was just a jumping off point and a way that something like this made sense to me emotionally.”
Still, at the same premiere, Haynes acknowledged the influence of the real-life case on the film. “There were times when it became very, very helpful to get very specific about the research, and we learned things from that relationship,” he said.
