Michael Lewis, the author who wrote the book that inspired The Blind Side, has defended the Tuohy family against accusations brought against them by former NFL star Michael Oher.
On Monday (14 August), Oher, 37, filed a lawsuit alleging that the story told in the 2009 sports drama, which won Sandra Bullock a Best Actress Oscar, was a fabrication, and that the white couple who brought him into their home made millions from his name.
Oher claimed that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy never actually adopted him. He alleged that, three months after he turned 18 in 2014, the couple got him to sign a document that named them as his conservators, and, therefore, legally able to make financial deals in his name.
The sports star also accused the couple of signing a deal that earnt them and their two biological children a significant sum for the film adaptation, which made more than $300m (£235.7m) at the box office following its 2009 release.
On Wednesday (16 August), shortly after Oher’s bombshell allegations, Lewis, who wrote The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, came out in defence of the Tuohy family.
“What I feel really sad about is I watched the whole thing up close,” Lewis told The Washington Post. “They showered him [Oher] with resources and love. That he’s suspicious of them is breathtaking. The state of mind one has to be in to do that. I feel sad for him.”
The 62-year-old writer said that he and the Tuohy family had each only received around $350,000 (£274,400) from the film’s box office profits, further suggesting that “everybody should be mad at the Hollywood studio system”.
Michael Oher and Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy in ‘The Blind Side’— (Getty Images)
“Michael Oher should join the writers’ strike. It’s outrageous how Hollywood accounting works, but the money is not in the Tuohys’ pockets,” he said.
In recent years, Oher had begun declining royalty checks from the Touhys, Lewis claimed, adding that he believed the family instead deposited the money into a trust fund for Oher’s son. He also said that he believed the family decided to go down the conservator route because it was a speedier process than legal adoption.
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According to Variety, the Touhy family attorney, Marty Singer, responded to Oher’s allegations in a statement on Tuesday (15 August), alleging that Oher had “threatened” to “plant a negative story about them in the press unless they paid him $15m”.
“Over the years, the Tuohys have given Mr Oher an equal cut of every penny received from The Blind Side,” Singer said. He did confirm that Oher had been placed under a conservatorship, but said that should he wish to terminate it, “either now or at anytime in the future, the Tuohys will never oppose”.
