Now 40 years old, the man who inspired the character played by Charles Melton (Golden Globe nominee) wonders why Todd Haynes’ team didn’t approach him.
Vili Fualaau, the ex-student of professor Mary Kay Letourneau, whose American tabloids made a splash in the 1990s, reacted to the Netflix film which stars Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.
“I’m offended,” the man who inspired the character of Charles Melton in Todd Haynes’ film May December, selected four times for the Golden Globes next Sunday, told the Hollywood Reporter. The man wonders why production never saw fit to contact him before filming.
“I’m still alive and healthy,” says Fualaau, now remarried since Letourneau’s death, and still living in Seattle where the scandal of their relationship unfolded when he was a minor. “If [production] had contacted me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece. Instead, they chose to reproduce my original story. »
At the film’s Los Angeles premiere in November, screenwriter Samy Burch emphasized that the case was just a “starting point.” For her part, actress Julianne Moore said that “this is not Mary Kay Letourneau’s story.”
But on the red carpet, Todd Haynes admitted that the Letourneau affair had been a source of inspiration. His film also has several similarities with the real story. “There were times when it was very helpful to be very specific in the research, and we learned things from that relationship,” he added.
Ironically, May December questions precisely the difficulty of conveying the truth in a work of fiction based on a true story…
