The true story behind Good American Family, the harrowing new show about Natalia Grace

Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo is FINALLY in another project, Good American Family, and it’s all about the twisted tale of Natalia Grace and the family that abandoned her.

The first two episodes of Good American Family were uploaded to Hulu with somewhat positive reviews despite the 50 per cent Rotten Tomatoes score. It’s still early days though, so don’t discount it yet. The show stars Ellen and Mark Duplass as Kristine and Michael Barnett who adopted seven-year-old Natalia Grace, played by Imogen Faith Reid.

“As they begin to raise her alongside their three biological children, mystery emerges around her age and background, and they slowly start to suspect she may not be who she says she is,” the official synopsis reads. “As they defend their family from the daughter they’ve grown to believe is a threat, she fights her own battle to confront her past and what her future holds, in a showdown that ultimately plays out in the tabloids and the courtroom.”

As with arguably all the best drama TV shows, Good American Family is inspired by a true story.

Good American Family is based on the true story of Natalia Grace

The TV show of course takes some liberties to keep us entertained but the bulk of the story is true and drawn from the life of Natalia Grace who lives with a rare form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SEDc). In 2008, she was adopted from Ukraine by a New Hampshire couple but was relisted for adoption in 2010 which is when the Barnetts took her in. They believed she was around six to seven years old at the time.

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Over the next few years, the couple became incredibly suspicious of Natalia and believed she was lying about her age because she spoke about getting her period and hiding bloody underwear.

Things grew steadily more insidious as the couple alleged that Natalia would urinate on her older brother, defecate intentionally in her bedroom, throw her brother’s toys in the middle of the street, and hide knives in her bedroom. They even claimed that she threatened to kill them while they were sleeping and that Natalia had tried to poison her adoptive mother with cleaning fluid.

At the same time, Natalia alleged a pattern of abuse that included but was not limited to, hitting her with a belt, pepper-spraying her eyes, and giving her three times the recommended dose of prescribed medication.

In the first two episodes we started to see those insidious moments poking through, but it’s expected to ramp up as the season rolls on.

They changed Natalia’s age in 2012

Later in the season, we will see how Kristine and Michael petitioned the Marion County Probate Court to legally change their daughter’s age to 22. The real Kristine and Michael were successful in this and it was largely down to Kristine cherry-picking doctors to fit her narrative and a detective thinking Natalia’s birth certificate was fake.

The following year they moved Natalia into her own apartment in Westfield, Indiana, and later Lafayette, Indiana, and then moved their family (without Natalia) to Canada.

After a month of living alone, Natalia connected with her neighbour Cynthia Mans, set to be played by Christina Hendricks in later episodes.

Natalia moved in with Cynthia and her family who later shared their belief that Kristine and Michael Barnett’s treatment of Natalia was inspired by the horror film Orphan. Natalia then found her family in the form of Nicole and Vincent DePaul, a New York couple with dwarfism, after accusing the Mans of exploiting her for cash.

It all came to light in 2019 and the Barnetts were charged with multiple counts of neglecting a dependent. Through adoption records and tracking down her birth mother, Natalia being secretly 22 was disproven but due to the case being tried based on her disability, not her age, both of her adoptive parents were found not guilty of neglect.

We will see most of this play out during Good American Family so buckle in.

Good American Family will be streaming on Disney Plus in May. For more like this, and the latest pop culture updates, like The Tab on Facebook.

Featured image credit: Disney