Falwells 'Always' Had Sex Tapes 'Hanging Over My Head,' Writes 'Pool Boy' Giancarlo Granda in New Book
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty; Shannon Finney/Getty Giancarlo Granda, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Becki Falwell
Giancarlo Granda, the former Miami pool attendant at the heart of a sex scandal involving Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki, is shedding new light on his side of the story.
Granda was 20 when his sexual relationship with Becki began after meeting the Falwells while the couple visited the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami in 2012. He has previously claimed that during his affair with Becki, her husband Jerry watched them — and filmed the encounters. The Falwells have denied those claims; they say that Jerry had no involvement.
The scandal became public in August 2020, when Reuters published an explosive report about Granda's account of his relationship with the couple. Later that month, Falwell Jr. stepped down as president of Liberty University.
In his new book, OFF THE DEEP END: Jerry and Becki Falwell and the Collapse of an Evangelical Dynasty, Granda shares his recollections of what happened. Read an excerpt from the book, which is available Tuesday, below.
The Falwells' Claims
In a January 2022 interview with Vanity Fair, Jerry claimed that as the relationship between the couple and Granda deteriorated and Granda grew desperate, he texted Jerry to say he would "take the kamikaze route" and would tell people that Jerry participated in the affair. For his part, Granda has denied the accusation that he tried to blackmail them.
While speaking with Vanity Fair, Becki admitted to making sex tapes with Granda. "I had a big Canon camera. A couple of times I put it on the dresser and Giancarlo agreed to it," Becki told the magazine.
Becki said she decided to end their sexual relationship in 2014 after Granda became serious with a girlfriend named Angelina, but that he remained part of their life due to professional ties with Jerry.
In late August 2018, the Falwells invited Granda and his family to stay at their farm, hoping it would be an opportunity to say goodbye, according to the Vanity Fair article. However, Becki claimed that during that trip Granda approached her in a bedroom after texting that the Wi-Fi wasn't working at the guesthouse, then pushed her onto a bed and pressured her to have sex.
"I kept saying no. I didn't want to do it. But I was scared to death of him too, because he was still holding everything over me, so we had sex," she said in the Vanity Fair interview. When it was over, she told the magazine, "He left and I went into the room and just cried."
An Excerpt from Granda's New Book
In an exclusive excerpt from his new book out Tuesday, Granda recalls his very different memories of the August trip, claiming that the tapes were the Falwells' "unspoken form of blackmail," and that Jerry encouraged the affair, taking sexual pleasure from filming Becki with Granda.
William Morrow Off the Deep End
When the Falwells found out I was moving to DC, and that my sister and mother would be helping me, Jerry and Becki insisted we all come spend the weekend with them and stay in the guesthouse. Lynchburg is three and a half hours from Washington, so this would be our next to last stop.
… Late on Saturday, August 25, we pulled up to at the Falwells' front gate and I used the access code Becki had texted me. We didn't see them that night, since they were babysitting their granddaughter. The next morning we all went out for brunch and Jerry and Becki gave us a tour of the Liberty campus, which they were proud to show off.
I had my dog Logan with me, and as we were walking into a building, an employee ran up to stop us from entering with a dog, even though he was on a leash. Becki turned around and simply nodded, and the woman apologized profusely and returned to her desk. Another reminder that the beautiful, sculpted grounds and endowed architecture was all a part of their private kingdom.
…
At one point, while we were showing my mom and sister the property, Jerry and Becki took me aside and encouraged me to find some time to slip away up to the house later so we could have sex. This time, I told them no. I had a girlfriend now, and they needed to respect that. This caught them off guard—especially after our recent Miami encounter. They had assumed everything was back to normal now; in retrospect, it's probably why they invited me to the farm in the first place. That night, my mother, sister, and I all turned in early, since we planned to leave bright and early the next morning. But as I was settling in at the guesthouse, Becki texted me an excuse so I could come back up to the main house for a hug—her euphemism for sex.
Becki: Wi-Fi working?
(No answer from me.)
Becki: Hopefully you can come down by yourself later so we can hug goodbye . . . just hug. I was totally caught off guard.
Me: ;)
Becki: Well??? Will you? You can say you have to call Angelina.
Me: We shall see.
Me: You gotta earn it;)
Becki: Please.
Me: I love you! DT [don't text]
("I was totally caught off guard" refers to my early rebuff.)
Steve Helber/AP/Shutterstock Becki Falwell and Jerry Falwell Jr.
Eventually, just like the last time, I gave in. They were relentless, and in my diminished state, I felt somehow like I owed them. I vowed that this would be the last time.
Even though my relationship with Angelina looked perfect from the outside, things were rocky, and we had broken up two or three times in the recent past. Relocating to different cities while on different academic tracks—me to DC and graduate school, her to Cambridge to go to law school—was not helping. I secretly didn't think it was sustainable, and I wasn't convinced we were compatible to begin with. It seemed to me like a turning point, and that's always when your defenses drop and insidious ideas take hold. That was Becki. She was ruthless, and skilled in the art of seduction, or at least of exploiting a power differential to get what she wanted. I was adrift; I actually had no home. And so eventually she wore me down, and I did what she asked.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free weekly newsletter to get the biggest news of the week delivered to your inbox every Friday.
And then there were the tapes. Beyond my own complicity and moral failings, there was the fact that the Falwells had half a dozen tapes of Becki and me having sex, and those were just the ones I knew about. Aside from the embarrassment and chaos they could unleash, they also represented an unspoken form of blackmail, since implicitly, I had to do whatever they wanted. And what they wanted was to keep having sex. This eventually would reach a breaking point, and it turned this was it. When our story finally went public, I said they had been blackmailing me the whole time, and I stand by that, even if they might not articulate it the same way. They always had these tapes hanging over my head, and for every second of that time, I carried a gnawing fear in the pit of my stomach that this would be my downfall. It almost was.
I excused myself and went up to the house to use the Wi-Fi. Jerry and Becki both greeted me at the front door, and we walked to the living room. Becki closed the curtains so no one could see us, and within seconds, we were on the couch making out, and then quickly, having sex. Jerry was sitting in the recliner just to our left, and once again he filmed us on his iPhone. Then he began to masturbate.
RELATED: Jerry Falwell Jr. and Wife Becki Open Up About Pool Boy Sex Scandal: 'I'm Partly to Blame,' He Says
After we finished, Becki seemed happy, and I was spent. I walked back down to the guesthouse, reflecting on what I'd done. I felt terrible, and angry, most of all with myself for sliding back into this position yet once again. What's the worst that can happen? seemed to be my motto at twenty. Now seven years later, and I had my answer. Or so I thought.
The guesthouse loomed before me. It was already way creepy in the best of times: a deconsecrated church, dating back to the nineteenth century, where it's always pitch-black outside at night. I went to sleep and reflected on my new life, which couldn't come soon enough. Then sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., there was a loud banging on the window. I woke up yelling from a deep sleep, in turn waking up my mom and sister. I went to the window and peered out, but there was no one there.
The next morning at breakfast, Jerry took me aside and confessed that it was him at the window: since both cell service and Wi-Fi were out, Becki had sent him down with an invitation to come back for round two. He said he ran away when I started shouting. He would have been pretty tanked up at that point in the evening, and he made a joke about it in front of everyone, but it fell flat. The whole breakfast was pretty awkward. I noticed my mother watching Becki, and she leaned over to me at one point and whispered, "She's being flirtatious with you." I couldn't argue with her.
Adapted from OFF THE DEEP END: Jerry and Becki Falwell and the Collapse of an Evangelical Dynasty by Giancarlo Granda and Mark Ebner, published by William Morrow. Copyright © 2022 by Giancarlo Granda. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
