Michael Oher has filed a lawsuit alleging he wasn’t adopted, but tricked into a conservatorship that gave parents, Sean & Leigh Anne Tuohy, total control over his assets.
In case you don’t know who Oher is, he’s one of the main characters of the mediocre 2009 Oscar winner, “The Blind Side.” The film revolved around his exploits as a young football player and the kind-hearted parents (Sean and Leigh) who adopted him.
In today’s filing, Oher alleges the Tuohys got paid millions in royalties for the movie, while he got nothing for his story. He’s calling the adoption a scam…
So, wait a second, if he wasn’t adopted, was he kidnapped by the Tuohys? Something‘s not right here. The story goes that the Tuohys took him in, many years before he became a professional athlete, from grinding poverty to a new life in their wealthy, and very white, family home.
Michael Lewis’ book, “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game” (’06), tackled Oher’s story as an under-educated offensive tackle, who was nurtured and adopted by the Touhys, and went on to play in the NFL. John Lee Hancock directed the 2009 film, and Sandra Bullock even wound up winning an undeserved Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Lee Anne.
15 years later, the story has dramatically changed. Why did it take Oher this long to tell his side of the story? I don’t know. In an 8.14 Shelby County court filing he claims that the Tuohys “did not, in fact, adopt him and lied about doing so in order to enrich themselves.” (via ESPN)
The petition further alleges that the Tuohys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from an Oscar-winning film that earned more than $300 million, while Oher got nothing for a story ‘that would not have existed without him.'
To put it in simpler terms, Oher wants his share of the money. It doesn’t help that his last pro-football gig was in 2017. Now, six years later, aged 37, he’s decided to turn on the Tuohys.
You have to wonder, considering all the attention this film got at the time, a huge box-office success, how no journalist ever uncovered this story.