Hulu’s “Good American Family” is closely inspired by the true story of Natalia Grace and her adoptive families over the years.
While the series explores her relationship with her most recent set of adoptive parents, Antwon Mans (Jerod Haynes) and Cynthia Mans (Christina Hendricks), the show does not include depiction of recently surfaced allegations of abuse against the real-life Manses.
A card at the end of the series briefly mentions the allegations, which emerged earlier this year in Season 3 of the Investigation Discovery documentary “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace.”
In the docuseries, multiple people who knew Grace and the Manses accused the family of physically and financially abusing Natalia and other children in their care.
The Manses have denied these abuse claims. TODAY.com has reached out to the Mans family for comment and has not heard back.
How does the show address allegations against the Mans family?
A disclaimer at the end of “Good American Family” acknowledges the recently surfaced allegations.
“Since this series was completed, abuse allegations against Antwon and Cynthia Mans have come to light,” the note reads. “They maintain their innocence, and to this day, so does (Grace’s other former adoptive mother) Kristine Barnett.”
The show’s creators have opened up about the abuse allegations, with executive producer Sarah Sutherland calling the claims against the Manses “devastating.”
“I think Natalia had been in a really bad state when Cynthia met her, and I think that there was a lot of love there. So it was really devastating to learn late after the fact, after we’d been shooting, that there were these abuse allegations,” she tells TODAY.com.
Sutherland says the show’s plotline is “very specific to a certain time period” and that the recently surfaced allegations “didn’t affect the current time period we were covering.”
Creator Katie Robbins also notes that the show’s ending, while it doesn’t incorporate the latest real-life allegations against the Manses, captures what her team set out to achieve with the series.
“The themes that we’re grappling with are the elusive nature of truth and the pervasiveness of bias, and so ending the story where we do felt like the most potent way to get at those issues,” she says.
Hendricks has also shared her views on how the show handles the allegations against the real-life inspiration for her character, Cynthia Mans, acknowledging the challenges of fictionally portraying a story that is still unfolding in the real world.
“Our story ends before those allegations came. So we wanted to make sure that, as we were taking the audience on this sort of wild journey and looking at it from all these different angles, that it is a very set specific time, because this show could go on forever, right?” she says.
“Because it is an ongoing story,” she continues. “So we had to make sure that there was, you know, a beginning, middle and end, so ours cuts off before those allegations.”
What are the Manses accused of?
The most recent season of “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace,” which aired in January, includes claims that the Manses financially exploited Grace over the years, alleging that Cynthia Mans made herself the payee of Grace’s monthly benefit payments.
The documentary includes footage from a 2014 FBI interview of Grace, in which she talks about signing over roughly $700 per month in benefits to her adoptive family, including 10% tithes to the church run by her adoptive dad, Antwon Mans.
Another person interviewed in the documentary, Robert Madewell, whose son was previously cared for by the Manses, accuses the couple of being “fraudsters” and “scammers.”
“They adopt and get kids for money,” he says in the docuseries. “It’s not about love; it’s all about the money, what they can get.”
The documentary also includes allegations that the Manses physically abused Grace and other children under their care.
Anna Newlin, who had a child under the Manses’ care at the time she was interviewed, told the documentary’s producers that Grace “used to get beat on all the time,” and claimed the Manses were “violent” toward Grace, alleging that they “hit her with a belt” and “knocked her down the stairs.”
Newlin walked back these claims in a subsequent interview and said the Manses have been falsely accused.
Grace herself has not alleged that the Manses physically abused her.
When asked by a producer on camera whether she or other children were beaten by the Manses, Grace says in the documentary, “I don’t want to talk about that.”
In the docuseries, Cynthia Mans denies allegations against her and her family, calling them “sick, twisted lies.”
She and Antwon Mans have not responded to request for comment from TODAY.com.
Grace moved in with the Manses in 2013, after she was left living alone in an apartment by her previous adoptive parents, Michael and Kristine Barnett.
The Manses formally adopted Grace in 2023. The Mans family appeared to be initially supportive of Grace, but their relationship seemed to take a turn not long after she was adopted.
That year, Cynthia and Antwon Mans called the producers of “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace,” claiming that a man named Neil, whom Grace was speaking to online, had “just completely flipped Natalia’s mind against her family.”
More ‘Good American Family’
“Natalia does not have emotions for nothing but herself,” Antwon Mans said in a recorded call, which was included in the documentary. “We’re done. We’re done with her.”
Neil reached out to the DePauls, a couple with dwarfism, in New York, who had originally tried to adopt Natalia, Nicole DePaul told People. He said he felt Grace was in danger.
Neil and the DePauls communicated for a month before helping Grace. Grace left the Manses abruptly, leaving a Tennesse church service and getting into Nicole DePaul’s car.
She now lives in New York State with the DePauls.
“This is all we’ve ever wanted for her — Natalia’s life as she wants to live it,” Nicole DePaul says in the documentary. “Besides having my own daughter, rescuing Natalia is one of the most proudest moments of my life.”