She has become just as adept as Dee Dee in the art of lies and manipulation, using some of her mother’s tactics back on her and those around her to get what she wants.

She runs off to be with a man she just met, she buys a burner phone, and even gets access to a laptop to create a Facebook profile and later join dating sites. Gypsy also continues to use a wheelchair when she doesn’t need to because her mother wants her to, fascinatingly seeming to occasionally forget that she can walk.īut as the years wear on and the series continues, Gypsy begins to rebel. “My mom needs me,” she says tearfully to the doctor before Dee Dee comes bursting in, ever-afraid of a betrayal. Arquette is absolutely masterful here in the way she switches among various facets of Dee Dee’s personality - a loving mother, a venomous jailer, a tired caretaker - all of which add up to the pitch-perfect signs of a master manipulator.ĭee Dee is so adept at controlling Gypsy with her own moods that even when Gypsy is offered the chance to escape or counteract her mother (as is the case with a concerned doctor who doesn’t believe she has half the ailments Dee Dee claims), she hesitates. She has Gypsy’s teeth removed, and then cunningly hands her false teeth at the very moment when a bruised and broken Gypsy has all but given up. Nothing scares Dee Dee more than Gypsy desiring her freedom, of course, which is why she does things like drug her with “sleepy baby” pills to make her seem incapacitated when a social worker stops by.

The true story of the act