Mary Kay Letourneau’s Husband ‘Offended’ by ‘May December’
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Vili Fualaau, who married his sixth-grade teacher, Mary Kay Letourneau, says he’s upset by filmmaker Todd Haynes’ new film, May December, which drew inspiration from Fualaau and Letourneau’s story. The movie, which stars Julianne Moore as the Letourneau-esque Gracie and Charles Melton as her young husband, Joe Yoo, depicts the couple dodging media exploitation at the hands of an actress played by Natalie Portman after Gracie served time for seducing Yoo when she was 36 and he was 13. In reality, Letourneau was 34, and Fualaau was 12 when they began their sexual relationship.
Fualaau tells The Hollywood Reporter that nobody from the production nor Netflix contacted him during the making of the movie. “If they had reached out to me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece,” Fualaau, now 40, said. “Instead, they chose to do a rip-off of my original story. I’m offended by the entire project and the lack of respect given to me — who lived through a real story and is still living it.”
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Screenwriter Samy Burch has called Fualaau and Letourneau’s scandal a “jumping-off point” for May December, according to THR, yet there are many similarities between real life and film. Both husbands are of AAPI descent. Both wives give birth to children in prison while serving time for child rape. Both couples marry after the woman is released from jail. One bit of dialogue, “Who was the boss?” even came directly from a TV interview with the real-life couple. Both couples also reached an impasse later in life; Fualaau and Letourneau legally separated in 2019, a year before her death of colorectal cancer.
Fualaau told THR that despite having gone through the gossip gristmill for decades, he’d still be open to working on a biopic about his relationship. “I love movies — good movies,” Fualaau said. “And I admire ones that capture the essence and complications of real-life events. You know, movies that allow you to see or realize something new every time you watch them. Those kinds of writers and directors — someone who can do that — would be perfect to work with, because my story is not nearly as simple as this movie [portrays].”
Reps for Netflix, Haynes, and Melton did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.
Haynes told Rolling Stone last month that the production made a conscious decision not to reach out to Fualaau. “We were advised from a legal standpoint to try to keep a separation between the [film and Fualaau],” he said. “And one wants to just respect his whole process and whatever that has been like since [Letourneau] passed away. And Mary Kay Letourneau as a subject is a very distinctive power or force, some of which inspired our tabloid imagery in the film that Natalie’s collected. We all needed ways of understanding how this myth was erected in her head that allowed this to occur.”
In another Rolling Stone interview, Melton described how he interpreted his character. “I felt this intuitive connection to who I thought Joe was — this repressed man, this loneliness, this sense of masking and layering himself in order to navigate and survive in life,” he said. “Joe doesn’t know how to take up space. Joe is protective of himself. So there’s this idea of thinking about the psychology of everything that just felt natural. To protect myself, maybe in a way I’m protecting Joe.”
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