Netflix’s The Politician owes much of its success to Ben Platt, who plays the lead role of Payton Hobart, a neurotic and obscenely rich teenager whose only goal is to be president of the United States.
But a side story that’s just as compelling? That of Infinity Jackson (Zoey Deutch), who plays Payton’s colleague in the vice presidency in the high school elections. But it’s soon revealed that Infinity, who is apparently fighting a long battle with cancer, may be suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy at the hands of her overprotective “Nana”, Dusty Jackson (Jessica Lange).
Now, true crime enthusiasts might have noticed that Infinity’s situation is eerily similar to the real-life case involving Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her mother and caregiver Dee Dee Blanchard, who was dramatized in the Hulu movie The Act earlier this year. For most of her life, Gypsy assumed she was suffering from leukemia, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, learning disabilities and a host of other issues. She took several medications, had numerous surgeries and even had a feeding tube. But it turned out that Dee Dee was suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and Gypsy was completely healthy.
Finally, after feeling like she was living in a “prison”, Gypsy conspired with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to kill Dee Dee. Nicholas stabbed Dee Dee to death in June 2015 and was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, explains an article, Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom Murdered, which drew attention on the case. Gypsy is currently serving 10 years in prison after being convicted of second degree murder. The story was later featured in the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest and the Hulu series The Act, starring Joey King and Patricia Arquette.
So you can see why we think The Politician’s Infinity and Dusty could be modeled after Gypsy and Dee Dee. But before we get to what Deutch and Lange had to say about this issue, we’ll go over the similarities between the two cases. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Both Infinity’s and Gypsy’s caregivers had Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
As I explained above, this is the most obvious similarity. Also known as factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), the Cleveland Clinic describes the disorder as “a mental illness in which a person acts as if a person they are caring for has a physical or mental illness when the person really is not sick. .” For example, Dee Dee gave Gypsy a cocktail of drugs that were completely useless. To this day, investigators aren’t exactly sure what she took, other than “some kind of tranquilizer,” according to Dean.
Dusty’s Southern attitude may also have been inspired by Dee Dee, who grew up in Louisiana and “would use her Southern charm to get (doctors) to be friendly and on their side,” she once said. Gypsy.
Infinity arata si se behaves ca Gypsy Rose.
While under her mother’s ever-watchful care, Gypsy was often bald, as Dee Dee regularly shaved her hair so that her daughter would look sick. With the exception of the final episode with a time jump, Infinity has no hair either. There is even a scene where Nana is seen shaving her head.
Gypsy has often been pictured in pastel, child-like clothes and hats, while Infinity is also seen in pink unicorn-print youth shirts and chunky knit sweaters and caps. Both spoke with young, high voices and acted well below their age. While Gypsy was 22 at the time of her mother’s death, Dee Dee once described her daughter as having a “7-year-old mind,” according to Dean.
Infinity and Gypsy both had boyfriends willing to kill for them.
Nicholas, whom Gypsy met on a Christian online dating site, plotted and succeeded in killing his girlfriend’s mother. This is compared to his not-so-intelligent boyfriend InfinityRicardo, who theatrically conspires with Nana Dusty to kill Payton, which turns out to be unsuccessful.
Both men ended up in correctional institutions, but while Nicholas is serving a life sentence, we learn from Infinity at the end that Ricardo has taken a role in his prison production of Guys and Dolls and will be out… in the latter.
Both Nana Dusty and Dee Dee were master con artists.
We’re first introduced to Lange’s Nana Dusty Jackson, when we see her use Infinity’s apparent illness to score a hard-to-get meal at Olive Garden. And in The Politician, you often hear Infinity refer to the various free trips he took because of his illness.
Despite causing and contributing to many of the symptoms that made Gypsy appear sick, Dee Dee often used her daughter’s condition to obtain gifts and cash donations. The two were local celebrities of their Missouri town and had concerts all over the country, meetings with celebrities and were invited to galas and fairytale conferences.
So, do the actors think that Infinity and Dusty are inspired by Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee Blanchard?
The similarities are totally there, right? We can see them and so can you. But the actors play shyly.
“It’s not a rendition of Gypsy Rose, it’s not,” Deutch said. “I would just like to reiterate this, similar to so many other topics, themes and discussions from The Politician , like voter suppression, gun control, the multitude of things that are being talked about a lot right now — Munchausen by proxy — these characters, Dusty and Infinity, are fictional in a fictional world. So I hope so [Gypsy Rose] he doesn’t follow him and I think this is an interpretation because in no case is he.”
As for Lange, she explained that the role of Dusty gave her the opportunity to access a funnier, more exaggerated character, which lacks any kind of realism.
“One of the things that immediately interested me was the idea of doing a black comedy. I haven’t done that many comedies over the years that I’ve been doing this, and I really wanted to do a character that’s as dark as he is just set in this world,” Lange told the publication. “I have certainly played such tortured characters in my career. But they were always played realistically and dramatically in that context. This was something else.”
So here it is. Even after all our analysis, real life and fiction are apparently not connected at all. But you can come to your own conclusions.
