Michelle Carter: What Really Happened vs What Hulu Showed in “The Girl from Plainville”
There are true crime stories that leave you questioning what you believe about guilt, intention, and mental health. And then there’s Michelle Carter.
Her case wasn’t bloody or cinematic. It didn’t involve a chase, a weapon, or a scream in the night. It involved text messages. Thousands of them. Between two teenagers, both struggling with their mental health and one final outcome that sparked nationwide debate: Could someone be held responsible for a death they didn’t physically cause?
Enter Hulu’s The Girl from Plainville, a dramatized retelling of the events surrounding the death of Conrad Roy III and the prosecution of his girlfriend, Michelle Carter. The series, starring Elle Fanning, brought the case back into the spotlight. And while it offered some emotional nuance and stylistic creativity, it also blurred the lines between fact and fiction.
So, let’s talk about it… not just what the show got right or wrong, but why the truth matters, and where the storytelling gets messy….
In reality, Michelle Carter was not the polished blonde seen on screen. She was awkward. Socially anxious. Hungry for attention, yes — but also drowning in her own internal chaos. From a young age, she dealt with depression, disordered eating, and chronic insecurity. She was prescribed antidepressants that may have numbed parts of her emotional processing, and she had few real friends.
Conrad Roy III, the boy she met briefly in person but bonded with mostly through texts, was also battling depression and trauma. Their relationship was almost entirely virtual. Over 60,000 messages is what was found, and that fact alone made it uniquely dangerous.
Michelle’s encouragement of Conrad’s fatal ideation wasn't just casual suggestion. It was repetitive, insistent, and relentless. And after his death, she didn’t seem shocked. She told friends. She framed herself as the grieving girlfriend. She even texted that she could’ve stopped it... but didn’t.
In The Girl from Plainville, Michelle (played by Elle Fanning) is portrayed with softness and complexity. The series focuses heavily on her inner world, using imagined musical numbers, dream sequences, and interactions with TV characters like “Glee’s” Rachel Berry to show her deep isolation and fantasy life.
And that creative choice makes sense — because Michelle was a girl living in an emotional fantasy bubble. But the show often skirts around just how serious her role in Conrad’s decision really was. It highlights her emotional pain and mental health, but sometimes seems hesitant to fully engage with the manipulative parts of her behavior.
You see a girl who’s sad, vulnerable, overwhelmed…
But you don’t always see the girl who told Conrad’s friends that she’d “take credit” for what happened.
Or the girl who coached him on what to say in his goodbye letters.
Or the one who didn’t call for help — even after the fact.
The Core Differences:
1. Tone and Sympathy
The Show: Wants you to understand Michelle, maybe even feel sorry for her.
Reality: Sympathy is harder to land once you see how much influence she really had in those final messages.
2. Messaging Frequency
The Show: Tones down just how constant and intense her texts were.
Reality: Court records show hundreds of messages over several days, many directly pressuring him when he hesitated.
3. Aftermath Behavior
The Show: Implies confusion and remorse.
Reality: Michelle's own texts to friends reveal that she may have seen the outcome as something that finally gave her meaning and attention.
4. Fantasy vs Accountability
The Show: Leans into surreal elements to represent Michelle’s detachment from reality.
Reality: That detachment may have existed, but accountability still had to come into play — and legally, it did.
So… Was the Show Wrong?
Hulu's The Girl from Plainville did something bold: it explored why someone might act the way Michelle did, without reducing her to a one dimensional villain. And there’s value in that.
But in softening her portrayal, the show also runs the risk of reframing real harm as emotional misunderstanding.
And that’s the danger of dramatizing true crime.
Because when you blur empathy and accountability too much, you risk rewriting the story in a way that makes it easier to watch — but harder to learn from.
Michelle Carter isn’t easy to define.
She was a teenager. She was hurting.
But she also crossed a line — a line that cost a life.
The show wants you to see her pain. The court needed to see her responsibility.
And somewhere in between those two truths… is the uncomfortable gray area we all have to sit with.
If we’re going to talk about crimes like this — emotional, digital, and deeply human — we need to hold both realities: the inner world and the impact. The psychology and the accountability.
Because justice doesn’t live in one scene.
It lives in the aftermath.
Want more like this?
Check out the latest episode of GBRLIFE of Crimes where we unpack Michelle Carter’s psychology, her trial, and what this case says about responsibility in the digital age.
🎧 Listen now right here on GBRLIFE or wherever you get your podcasts.
If You Loved This, You’ll Love These Too:
Have You Heard The Latest Episode of GBRLIFE of Crimes?
GBRLIFE has so much more:
