Michael Oher, the former NFL player whose poverty-to-pro football life story inspired the 2009 Oscar-winning film The Blind Side, claims in new petition to end conservative that adoption at film center was an embarrassment Old and Leigh Ann Tuohy for profit.
The 14-page document, first reported by ESPN, was filed Monday in Tennessee by the 37-year-old Oher, who began digging into the movie deal after he quit playing football. foot in 2016. Oher’s petition asks the court to terminate the Tuohys’ conservatorship, issue a restraining order prohibiting them from using their name and likeness, and make the couple pay their fair share of profits to be paid to him, as well as unspecified damages.
The lie about Michael’s adoption” was actually a conservatorship signed less than three months after he turned 18 in 2004, giving the Tuohys legal control over Oher’s financial affairs, according to the legal application. “Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and shame in February 2023, when he discovered that the Conservancy he agreed to on the basis that it would make him a member of the Tuohy family, of course he did not give him a family relationship with. the Tuohys,” the document says. The Tuohy family’s attorney, Steve Farese, declined to comment to ESPN, saying a legal response would be filed in the coming weeks. Vanity Fair has also reached out to Farese for comment.
Others claim that he never received a cent from him The Blind Side, the biopic it was based on Michael Lewis2006 book and made over $300 million at the box office. The John Lee Hancock– won a directed film Sandra Bullock Academy Award for her performance as Leigh Anne and she also starred Tim McGraw as Old and Quinton Aaron like Oher. According to the petition, the Tuohys and their two children were paid $225,000 each, plus 2.5% of the film’s “marked net proceeds.” In addition, the suit alleges, a 2007 contract apparently signed by Oher assigned his life rights to 20th Century Fox “without any compensation.” In their 2010 book, In a heartbeat: Sharing the power of cheerful giving, the Tuohys wrote that compensation for him The Blind Side divided five ways between the family members.
Oher has also previously said that his on-screen portrayal as an academically challenged teenager ruined his professional life. “People look at me, and they take things away from me because of film,” Oher said in 2015, according to ESPN. “They don’t really see the skills and the type of player that I am.”
According to Oher’s lawyer, J. Gerard Strath IV, “Mike’s relationship with the Tuohy family began to deteriorate when he found out that he was portrayed in the film as an unintelligent person. That relationship continued to weaken “as he learned that he was the only member of the family who did not receive royalty checks from the film, and it was permanently broken when he realized that he was not accepted and part of the family.”
Members of the Tuohy family began responding to the suit on Monday. Sean Tuohy told the Daily Memphian that Oher’s claims have “devastated” the family, explaining that he and Leigh Anne created the guardianship so Oher would be eligible to play football at his alma mater their alma mater, University of Mississippi. Sean said that “everyone in the family got an equal share” of $14,000 from the film, “including Michael”. He said, “I will say that it is a shame that people would think that I would want to make money from my children.”
son of Sean and Leigh Ann, Sean Tuohy Jr., gave an interview to Barstool Radio in which he said he made “60, 70 grand over the last four, five years” from the film. He also disputed the idea that Oher only learned about the reservation earlier this year. “If he says he learned that in February, I find it hard to believe,” Sean Jr. said. “I was curious … to go back and look at our family group texts to see what things were said, and there were things back in 2020, 2021 that were like, ‘If you give me this much , I don’t go public with things.”
Oher has candidly shared his thoughts on the film in his new book, When your back is against the wall, published last week. “So much is created from The Blind Side I am grateful for it, which is why you may be surprised that the knowledge of the story has also been a major source of some of my deepest hurt and pain over the past fourteen years. ‘ gone,” Oher writes. “Besides the details of the deal, the politics, and the money behind the book and the movie, it was the principle of the choices some people made that cut me the deepest. “
