Early on in Good American Family, viewers of the weekly Hulu series about the adoptive parents of Natalia Grace get a sense that they aren’t being told the full story.
The dramatization of the real-life national news story of Kristine and Michael Barnett adopting Grace, a Ukrainian child orphan with a rare and severe form of dwarfism, has been primarily unfolding in flashback to explore what allegedly happened after the Indiana husband-and-wife adopted Grace in 2010. But each episode opens with a flash-forward that gives even the most unassuming viewer (who hasn’t seen the headlines or watched the ID docuseries The Curious Case of Natalia Grace) hints that there is at least one unreliable narrator telling this story.
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The first four episodes have explored the Barnetts’ point of view to explain why they end up being accused of neglect for abandoning Grace. Their adopted daughter was actually an adult posing as a child and became a threat to the family, they alleged; a “sociopathic con artist,” to quote Kristine, who is played in Good American Family by Ellen Pompeo, also an executive producer on the series created by Katie Robbins. The episodes have been told primarily through Kristine’s point of view as she has tried to convince her husband that she and their three children are being targeted by Grace.
In the fourth episode released on Wednesday, titled “Right There in Black and White,” Michael finally agrees with Kristine, after multiple alleged threats to the family, that Grace is dangerous. They tell their story to a local policeman and go through the legal process to change Grace’s age from 7 to 22. They interview doctors and provide the needed paperwork to correct what they allege is her true age. The episode ends with the Barnetts setting up a reluctant Grace with an apartment to live on her own, as they plan to remain her guardians from afar due to her disability.
The episode ends with the couple, finally, hopeful. But the present-day timeline has already made it clear that relief won’t last long, as in the near-future, the Barnetts’ marriage dissolves and even in their divorce, they turn on each other. Michael is seen in present-day cooperating with an investigator against Kristine, whom he calls the “devil,” to get the abandonment charges filed against her. Episode four’s flash-forward reveals he’s also going to be charged for his involvement.
From the start, creator Robbins had described the series as dramatizing multiple conflicting points of view. “We’re led to question if our understanding of what we’ve been seeing the whole time is actually what happened,” Robbins told The Hollywood Reporter about how she structured the series, telling viewers what to expect as the series releases new weekly episodes. “My hope is that we have tried very, very hard to tell a version of this story that is empathetic and that gives justice to [Natalia’s] story.”
When signing on to play Michael, Mark Duplass admits he had hesitations. He said he had glanced the headlines and had an awareness of Grace’s story, and he also knew there was a docuseries. “I was confused if the movie Orphan may or may not have been involved in this story,” he recalls to THR, citing the 2009 film starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabelle Fuhrman that is also referenced in the series. “I was just kind of mystified by it all and probably made some very reductive and purile snap judgments.”
So Duplass confronted Robbins and co-showrunner Sarah Sutherland with his questions. “I was like, ‘Why are we telling this story? Let’s not just be another ripped-from-the-headlines story,’” he says. “And they were like, ‘Thank you for asking because this is a multi-layered, multi-prospective version of this story that we’re going to take eight episodes to tell.’ When I realized they were going to allow this sort of Rashomon-like approach, I was like, ‘Oh, this is really something quite different.’”
The series will now head into its second-half, with more perspectives set to be introduced, and the character of Michael is mainly seen through other viewpoints.
“Michael was so fascinating from a number of things that I’m interested in,” Duplass says of his attraction to the character. “Mental health issues, how to stay on your feet, looking at a damaged past and figuring out how to right those wrongs and raise your kids in a way that hopefully supersedes that, developing a hero complex in the process, letting your ego get in the way and just watching the road to hell be paved with ‘good intentions.’ These are all things that felt really in my wheelhouse to connect to.”
When capturing Michael’s perspective, Duplass says he didn’t speak to the real Michael Barnett (similar to Pompeo and Imogen Faith Reid, who plays Grace). “I didn’t speak to Michael. I didn’t try to,” he explains. “It was pretty evident to me that I was going to be creating my own character here. Because you’re watching the story told through different perspectives, he’s actually quite different depending on the lens with which we’re watching him, so that really meant I was going to have to design this thing myself. It’s sort of my version of what Michael should be.”
Pompeo had expressed similar hesitations when discussing first being approached with the role. “I thought, ‘Well, that sounds insane. Why would I want to play that character?’” the Grey’s Anatomy star previously recalled to THR when talking about desiring to play a role that would be different enough from Meredith Grey. “I read the pilot. I said, ‘This is an insane script in the best possible way, but … this looks like [career] suicide.’ There are so many ways this could get misinterpreted and go wrong, how do we not do the bad version of this show? They said, ‘You have to speak to Katie. You have to meet Katie, and you have to meet Imogen.’”
Pompeo said that after her meeting, she knew Robbins was thoughtful, smart and empathetic, and that her take on Grace’s story would be told in the way that it should, “with sensitivity and awareness,” she said. Meeting Imogen, she added, solidified her decision. “She really was what pulled me in, because you do need that character to be perfect or it doesn’t work. And she was, and she is.”
Now, Duplass teases what’s still to come. “This is the great thing about this story,” he tells THR. “We’ve talked to a few people who have seen this and most people are convinced that by the end of the eight episodes, they have finally figured out the truth, and most people’s truths are different from each other.”
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Good American Family releases new episodes weekly Wednesdays on Hulu, leading to an April 30 finale. Read THR’s interview with Ellen Pompeo and Katie Robbins.
