Sandra Bullock has broken her silence on Michael Oher’s lawsuit against the Tuohy family.
Bullock won an Oscar for her role in the 2009 movie The Blind Side, where she played the matriarch of the Tuohy family, Leigh Anne.
It comes after Oher, a former NFL player, said in a lawsuit that the family profited millions off of his name and that the adoption narrative in the film was a lie.
Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, a couple who welcomed 18-year-old Oher into their house as a high school student, are accused of never truly adopting him, according to a petition submitted in probate court in Shelby County, Tennessee.
Instead, the athlete’s attorneys claim that in 2004, just months after Oher’s 18th birthday, they persuaded him to sign a paper designating them as his conservators and granting them the authority to do business on behalf of the athlete.
According to court documents, the couple took use of their authority as conservators to sign the rights for the Oscar-winning film The Blind Side, about Oher’s life, which featured Bullock as Leigh Anne, brought in more than $300 million. However, the money only benefitted the Tuohys and their 2 biological children, who allegedly received $225,000, plus 2.5% per cent of the “net proceeds.”
ESPN said that Oher alleges he was not paid for the movie “that would not have existed without him” and that the family has continued to refer to him as their adopted son solely for personal gains.
Following the news of Oher’s lawsuit, people began to call for Bullock to be stripped from her Oscar, despite there being no evidence that she knew anything about what might have been going on with the family behind the scenes.
“So Sandra Bullock should have to give back her Oscar right, and man do we need to start checking these good feeling stories,” one person wrote.
However, not everyone agreed, with some coming to Bullock’s defence: “Not y’all calling for Sandra Bullock’s Oscar to be revoked. It ain’t her fault the real life people were exploitative scammers and thieves.”
The latest update, though, comes from a source close to the star, who spoke to the Daily Mail about how Bullock really feels about what’s going on.
They said that the fifty-nine-year-old ‘hates’ that something she worked hard on and believed to be true is now ‘tainted’.
“Now people won’t watch it and if they do, they will have a completely different reaction to its original intention,” they continued.
“There was so much hard work put into the film that they all thought was the truth and now that has been questioned, it just upsets Sandra to no end that a time in her life that was so special, is now shadowed with a completely different perspective.”
