Michael Oher has opened up about how he was depicted in The Blind Side amid his legal battle against Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy.
Michael’s life story famously inspired the 2009 movie The Blind Side, based on a 2006 book of the same name. It follows Michael’s journey from austerity to NFL stardom after the Tuohys — a wealthy white family from Tennessee — adopted him and provided him with the resources to kickstart his career.
In August last year, Michael shocked fans of the film by filing a lawsuit against the Tuohys, claiming that his adoption was faked and that the couple had “tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators.”
Though the case is ongoing, a judge ruled in September 2023 that conservatorship should be terminated, saying they couldn’t “believe” that such an agreement had been put in place over a person with no disabilities.
Now, Michael is speaking out about the lawsuit and denying accusations that he sued the Tuohys purely for financial gain.
For the wide-ranging interview, Michael — now 38 and living in Nashville with his wife and five children — returned to Memphis, where he previously lived with the Tuohys. “Honestly, it was great,” he recalled that time in his life. “I had a bed to stay on. I was eating good. They got me a truck.”
Despite this, Michael feels that the Tuohys duped him and resents how he was depicted as “dumb” in The Blind Side, which came out at the start of his professional football career.
After Michael filed his lawsuit last year, attorney Marty Singer denied the “outlandish” accusations on behalf of the Tuohys. He claimed that the couple continued to provide Michael with his “equal share” of earnings, even after he allegedly sought to “threaten” them in a $15 million “shakedown effort.”
Court filings later suggested that Michael sent texts to the Tuohys demanding money and calling them “thieves.” When questioned about these messages by the Times, Michael said he “was just still trying to figure things out” at that time.
When asked why he waited before going public with his grievances against the Tuohys and filing the lawsuit, Michael said: “I went along with their narrative because I really had to focus on my NFL career, not things off the field.”
