Hulu’s The Girl from Plainville Goes Beyond the Headlines, Giving Context to Tragedy
Photo Courtesy of Hulu
This review originally published on March 12, 2022.
Where is the line between entertainment and exploitation? Do television producers have any moral obligation to the real-life people whose lives serve as fodder for their series?
These are questions I found myself grappling with while I watched the new Hulu limited series The Girl from Plainville. After I finished watching the eight episodes, I procrastinated writing my review. Something about reviewing a recent real-life tragedy just seemed wrong. Because unlike other recent true crime TV series including Inventing Anna, The Dropout, or WeCrashed, the victim in Plainville didn’t lose money or status. He lost his life.
Plainville, from executive producers and showrunners Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus, tells the story of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts native Conrad “Coco” Roy (Colton Ryan), a recent high school graduate, who on July 13, 2014 committed suicide. Soon after his death, it was discovered that his girlfriend Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning, who also serves as an executive producer on the series)—who lived in nearby Plainville, Massachusetts—had encouraged him to kill himself, and at one point even told him to get back into his car which was filled with carbon monoxide.
Roy’s death is a gut-wrenching tragedy. He died less than eight years ago, and I would assume that the loss of a beloved brother, son, and grandson still is felt deeply and daily by his family. The profoundly disturbing nature of Carter’s texts combined with the groundbreaking legal ramifications of bringing Carter to trial made the case the perfect tabloid fodder. News crews descended onto the courtroom. Carter was on the cover of People magazine. There has already been a 2018 Lifetime movie, Conrad & Michelle: If Words Could Kill, starring Bella Thorne and Austin P. McKenzie, and HBO had a two-part documentary series I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth V. Michelle Carter in 2019. Roy’s tragic death has been explored (exploited?) over and over again.
So the question really becomes what can Plainville offer viewers? Most TV series don’t need to justify their existence. This one does and, for the most part, rises to the challenge. The series, which is based on an Esquire article of the same name written by Jesse Barron, is never sensationalistic. It seeks to explain but never justify the circumstances that lead to Roy’s death.
Ultimately, the truly outstanding performances make this series. Both Fanning and Ryan portray their characters with a palpable empathy that transcends the ripped-from-the-headlines source material. They take their characters beyond the sensationalistic soundbites. Fanning makes Michelle a fully realized character and gives her depth beyond the image we all know of a sullen girl with blond hair and unnaturally dark eyebrows. Before the truth came out, just being the girlfriend of a boy who killed himself thrust Michelle into fame, making her the sympathetic heroine and giving her the attention she so desperately craved. (Michelle is so desperate for love and validation that she even worries if the judge likes her.) Ryan, for his part, gives Conrad such profound sadness. He’s a boy who loves his family and has goals and dreams, but the day to day battle with his inner demons became insurmountable.
The entire cast is terrific, but Chloë Sevigny is a true standout as Coco’s mom, Lynn. Her pain is so raw. Her devastation at her inability to save her son is gut-wrenching. Coco’s parents and Michelle’s parents aren’t perfect, but they are loving and involved and want the best for their children. What Plainville makes clear is that there is so much gray area to this story; nothing is as black and white as the news headlines may have made it seem.