Former NFL star Michael Oher has broken his silence on the lawsuit he filed last year in which he accused Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy of cheating him out of custody and unfairly profiting from the book and movie “The Blind Side,” which focused on the couple’s relationship with Oher.
in interview In an article published in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday, Oher lamented that the film, released in 2009 just two months after his first NFL season, stripped him of his true identity.
“That’s what hurt me the most,” O’Hare said. “Once I got there, I was identified.”
In a lawsuit that made headlines last August, O’Hare alleged that the Tuohys lied about his adoption and instead placed him under a conservatorship that gave the couple control over his finances and major life decisions. He also accused them of cutting him out of the money they earned from “The Blind Side.”
A Tennessee judge quickly ended the conservatorship, but the rest of the lawsuit continued, with the Tuohys denying Oher’s accusations and alleging that Oher received more than $138,000 in royalties from the book and film.
Based on Michael Lewis’s 2006 book, The Blind Side won Sandra Bullock an Academy Award for her portrayal of Leigh Anne and was nominated for Best Picture. However, both novels largely ignored Oher’s perspective and instead went for the white savior character of the Tooheys saving the desperate Oher.
Oher particularly criticized the film for its demeaning portrayal of him as someone who was unintelligent and unaware of what was going on around him, including football, which he said led the NFL to question whether he could “read the playbook.”
While the film and book suggest Oher knew little about football when he joined a nearly all-white private high school, he was selected to the Memphis Metro team that same season by a Memphis daily newspaper. Oher kept a clipping from the newspaper on his phone as evidence that he was known for his talent before the Tuohys entered his life.
Oher pointed out another similar discrepancy between his account and the Tuohy family’s: While the Tuohys claimed to have taken him in the spring of his junior year, Oher recalled moving in with them during the summer, meaning he had already been named the nation’s top college football player before he began living at the Tuohy family home.
Oher told the magazine that his reaction when he first saw the film was one of bewilderment.
“It seemed funny to me, to be honest, like it was a comedy about someone else,” he said, expressing fear that public perceptions of him based on the film could affect his children. “If my kids can’t do something in class, is their teacher going to think, ‘Their dad is stupid — is that why they don’t understand?’”
Despite his complaints about the Tuohy family’s misuse of his image, Oher described fond memories of his time with them and acknowledged that others might view his actions as ingratitude. He explained that he agreed with the family’s narrative for decades because his focus was on his NFL career.
Oher played five seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, winning a Super Bowl in 2013, and later played for the Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers before retiring in 2017. He said he is now working to get back to his pre-“Blindside” form.
“I was very angry for a long time psychologically,” he said. “I’ve been through what I’ve been through. I want to be the person I was before The Blind Side, character-wise. I’m still working on that.”
Oher also recounted the impact the Tuohy family’s embrace had on him at an early age.
“He said the first time I heard the words ‘I love you,’ it was Sean and Lee Ann saying it. And when that happens at 18, you become vulnerable. You let your guard down and then everything is stripped away from you.”
The Tuohys declined to speak to the magazine about the interview, and did not respond to a request for comment Monday. They have previously declined to speak to NBC News about the lawsuit.
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