Self-Made True Story: What Netflix Changes About Madam C.J. Walker’s Life

Netflix’s Self Made tells the true story of Madam C.J. Walker, but not everything in the four-part, limited run series really happened. Based on the biography On Her Own Ground written by her great-great-granddaughter A’Lelia Bundles, the show does take some liberties with reality.

In real life, Madam Walker (born Sarah Breedlove) was indeed a pioneering businesswoman. She worked her way from nothing to running her own Walker Manufacturing Company, a haircare empire. According to Guinness World Records, she was America’s first self-made, female, African-American millionaire.

Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer plays the very real Madam Walker in Self Made. The supporting cast includes Tiffany Haddish, Blair Underwood, Carmen Ejogo, Kevin Carroll, Garrett Morris, and J. Alphonse Nicholson. In the series, Walker’s rise to fortune begins in 1908 in St. Louis, when she was already in midlife. That already is inaccurate, because she wasn’t living in that city at that time. So how else does Self Made stretch the truth?

Madam C.J. Walker’s Feud With Addie Monroe

Self Made’s Addie Monroe was Annie Turnbo Malone in real life. Malone was as equally an entrepreneurial force as Madam Walker, even more so, considering the latter had stolen the former’s original “hair grower” formula. She was herself a self-made millionaire, having an empire worth an estimated $14 million by 1920. That success is never brought up in the series, which portrays her as an outright villain.

While Madam C.J. Walker did actually get into the haircare business working for Malone, it was in 1904, not four years later as the show suggests. She was a sales agent for Malone’s “The Great Wonderful Hair Grower.” Self Made puts forth that the two had a falling out over Madam Walker’s looks, with Addie telling her she was not the type of woman she wanted representing her product. While there seems to have been some disagreement in the real story, there is no evidence that it was over Madam Walker’s appearance.

The real inspiration for Addie also did not chase Madam Walker all over America, going from city to city in attempts to cripple her business. She was established in St. Louis and stayed there until moving to Chicago after a divorce in 1927.

Denver And Marriage To C.J. Walker

Charles Joseph Walker, better known as C.J., was Madam Walker’s third husband, a detail not highlighted in Self Made. She had previously been married to Moses McWilliams, who fathered her daughter Lelia and died just two years later. She then married John Davis in 1894, but that union ended in divorce.

It wasn’t until 1906, when Madam Walker was living in Denver, that she married C.J., who worked in advertising. It was also in Denver that she began producing her own hair grower. Self Made completely cuts the city of Denver out of the picture. The Walkers are portrayed as married and living in St. Louis before moving to Indianapolis.

Divorce From C.J. Walker

The real timeline of the Walkers’ relationship is not accurately reflected in Self Made. C.J. was not by her side for her move to Indianapolis, which is a pivotal plot point in the show. The couple divorced in 1910, according to the National Women’s History Museum. It was only after the failure of her marriage to C.J. that she took her business to Indianapolis and built a factory. He simply wasn’t around for much of the Walker Manufacturing Company’s successes.

Self Made‘s allegation that C.J. cheated on Madam Walker with one of her employees is true, but the show left out that he was also an alcoholic, which also led to troubles between them. Their relationship fell apart quickly. Madam Walker, however, did not drag out their divorce as is depicted in the series. She quickly ended their marriage with Freeman Ransom, Madam Walker’s longtime attorney, facilitating it from her end.

Protests By Madam Walker’s Sales Agents

As Madam Walker makes moves to get her Glossine haircare product onto drugstore shelves, Self Made shows her employees protesting outside of a gala at her mansion in New York’s Westchester County. Worried that their jobs would be eliminated if the product they sold was easier to get by visiting a shop, they hold banners emblazoned with slogans like “Help Us Help Ourselves” and “Sales Agents Deserve Respect” while chanting “No drugstore! Save Glossine!”

There were most likely no such organized protests in real life, but sales agents did present Madam Walker with a petition. It explained that they did not feel that they had “the proper protection from you by placing your goods in the drugstores,” and that it was causing their own sales to decline, according to Newsweek. In Self Made, Madam Walker tries reasoning with her staffers, before consulting her neighbor John D. Rockefeller for business advice. In the end, she rallies the protestors and gets them to agree to stand by her side.

The real Madam Walker was not one to be challenged, though. She reportedly threatened to stop working with any agents who did not embrace her ways. And while it is true that Rockefeller did have a home nearby to Madam Walker’s real Villa Lewaro estate in Westchester County, there is nothing that suggests they ever interacted.

Lelia Walker’s Lesbian Relationship

Lelia Walker, who changed her first name to A’Lelia, was Madam Walker’s actual daughter. She remained very close to her mother throughout her life and took over as president of the Walker Manufacturing Company after her mother died in 1919.

In Self Made she marries and divorces John Robinson, which is a true fact. During that marriage, she is shown growing very close to a woman named Esther, a hair dresser. The two are depicted happily picnicking together and lounging on a bed. There is a strong suggestion that they are engaging in a queer relationship, and that Madam Walker was stridently against it.

Esther is, in fact, a fictional character, and there is no evidence that the real Lelia was a lesbian. She was, however, a patron of the arts and founder of The Dark Tower, a cultural salon in Harlem. The salon was welcoming to the LGBTQ community. A’Lelia Bundles, author of Self Made‘s original source material, confirms the welcoming attitude of A’Lelia Walker and The Dark Tower. “She had many friends who were queer. She was comfortable, they were very comfortable in her home,” said Bundles in O Magazine. But Bundles also suggests that the real woman who Lelia was inspired by may have gotten close to a longtime female friend after the failure of her third marriage.