The Girl From Plainville True Story: What The TV Show Changes

Content Warning: This article discusses suicide and emotional abuse.

The Girl from Plainville is a true-crime drama streaming on Hulu about the real-life death of a young man who was urged to take his own life by his girlfriend. In 2014, 18-year-old Conrad Roy’s death became the subject of a controversial and precedent-setting “texting suicide” case, in which his girlfriend was charged with manslaughter for encouraging him to kill himself over the course of several months. The Hulu series The Girl from Plainville stars Elle Fanning as Michelle Carter, Roy’s 17-year-old long-distance girlfriend. Conrad Roy is played by Colton Ryan in the miniseries, which debuted with a 3 episode release on March 29, 2022. The story looks at the relationship between Roy and Carter leading up to the suicide and the immediate aftermath that prompted police to investigate it as manslaughter.

In the series, Michelle Carter seems like a typical teenage girl, who plays softball, enjoys the teen dramedy series Glee, and texts back and forth with a boy she likes named Conrad. After Conrad’s death, the dark side of Michelle’s relationship with him starts to show. Just as reported in the real case, in the Hulu true-crime series, Michelle and Conrad discuss his suicidal thoughts over text and in phone calls leading up to that fateful day. Instead of encouraging him to seek help or preventing him from taking drastic action, Michelle urges Conrad to take his own life. The Girl from Plainville series paints a picture of two lonely, troubled teens deep in a dark Romeo and Juliet fantasy.

The Girl from Plainville borrows a lot from the actual case that became national news, but like many “based on a true story” projects, it takes some creative license with the story. The limited series presents Michelle as a social outcast who uses Conrad’s death to garner sympathy from classmates with whom she wants to be friends. The question of the series is whether or not she pushed Conrad to kill himself for the sympathy and attention that his death would bring her. In reality, Michelle Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2017 and served 12 months of her 17-month sentence. How much of the story in The Girl from Plainville matches the true events?

Michelle Carter’s Relationship With Conrad Roy

Like in the series, Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy met in Naples, Florida, in 2012 while they were both visiting relatives. Coincidentally, they were both from towns in Massachusetts that were an hour apart from one another. Carter and Roy’s relationship was mostly over text and email, and they only met in person a few times. They had a romantic relationship on and off over the years leading up to Roy’s death. That exchange was representative of their real-life relationship. The Girl from Plainville opens with the teen couple texting and comparing their relationship to that of Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed lovers created by William Shakespeare. In the beginning, Carter urged Roy to get help for his suicidal thoughts. Both teens had mental health struggles, and they bonded over those struggles together. Sometime in 2014, Carter decided that it would be better to help Roy die by suicide, and she began to urge him to do so.

The Death Of Conrad Roy

Conrad Roy III struggled with suicidal thoughts after his parents’ divorce in 2012. The series depicts him as a young man dealing with several issues who needs to take a year off to cope with his anxiety disorder. In reality, Roy did have mental health struggles and had attempted to take his life shortly after the trip to Florida in 2012 by overdosing on acetaminophen. In the month leading up to his death, Roy texted back and forth with Michelle Carter about wanting to kill himself. Carter helped him develop methods and would encourage him when he expressed doubt about killing himself. He spent the day walking along the beach in his hometown of Mattapoisett with his mother, Lynn Roy, played by Chloe Sevigny in the series. According to his mother, he was texting with Carter most of the day. Later, he left home saying that he was going to meet a friend. Instead, he drove to a K-Mart parking lot and asphyxiated on carbon monoxide from his truck’s exhaust. Carter had helped him develop the method to cause his asphyxiation and encouraged him to get back into the truck when he got out because he realized that it was working. His body was discovered by police on July 13, 2014.

Michelle Carter’s Fundraiser For Conrad Roy

Homers for Conrad was the event in the series organized by Michelle Carter and Roy’s best friend Rob Mahoney, played by Cherry co-star Jeff Wahlberg, to honor Roy’s memory and raise money for mental health awareness. This event was based on a real event organized by Carter and Roy’s real-life best friend, Tom Gammel. In reality, Gammel wanted to organize something for Roy, and just like in the series, Carter took over. She organized the fundraiser in her hometown of Plainville instead of Mattapoisett, where Roy was from and where most of his friends and family lived. Carter also really did insert herself into a photo that Roy’s baseball teammates were taking at the fundraiser, just like she does in the series. Gammel testified that Carter seemed to be seeking attention from Roy’s death.

Michelle Carter Was Obsessed With Glee

The real-life Michelle Carter was a “Gleek” like many teens were in 2014. In the series, Carter is shown quoting a scene from the Glee episode “The Quarterback,” which was a tribute episode to Cory Monteith, who died of a drug overdose in 2013. The scene featured Lea Michele’s character Rachel giving a speech to honor Monteith’s character Finn. Cory Monteith and Lea Michele were a couple in real life before he died. In text messages to her friends, Carter used nearly direct quotes from both Glee and Lea Michele’s interviews to talk about Roy’s death. The series suggests that Carter’s obsession with Glee and Lea Michele may have prompted her to urge Roy to take his own life, having seen Michele’s respect and praise following Monteith’s death. However, the real reasoning behind Carter’s actions has never been determined.

Conrad Roy and Michelle Carter’s Friends

The Girl From Plainville depicts Michelle Carter as a social outcast without any real friends other than Susie (Pearl Amanda Dickson from Lucy In The Sky), possibly based on her real-life softball teammate Alice Felzmann. In the show, Carter desperately seeks attention from girls at school, but in reality, Carter was described as popular and well-liked, and the students who attended her school banded together, refusing to bad mouth her to the press.  Carter also described herself as “obsessed” with Felzmann and expressed feeling attraction to her. Conrad Roy’s best friend in the series is Rob Mahoney, who is likely based on his real-life friend Tom Gammel. Gammel was Roy’s closest friend and claimed to have never heard of Carter before Roy’s death, similar to Mahoney in the series.

The Case Against Michelle Carter

In the fall of 2014, the police obtained a warrant for Carter’s phone. Like in the series, Carter had turned 18 by the time the warrant was obtained, so the police did not have to treat her like a minor and involve her parents. Scott Gordon (Kelly AuCoin), the lead detective on the case in the series, is based on the real detective who discovered Carter and Roy’s dark text messages. After obtaining Carter’s phone, over 300 pages of texts were discovered, including messages where Carter encouraged Roy to go through with his suicide plans and messages to friends where she admits to telling him to get back into the truck. In 2017, Judge Lawrence Moniz determined that Michelle Carter was guilty and sentenced her to two and a half years in prison.

The case in The Girl from Plainville highlights the changing ways that the US legal system must learn to contend with the digital world. Social media and smartphones have connected humanity in new ways, which has increased how people can harm one another. Michelle Carter’s case set a precedent. Her actions, regardless of her motivations, were deemed to have directly affected Conrad Roy’s decision to end his life. The Hulu series explores a fictionalized version of their relationship and tries to imagine what might have been the motivation behind Carter’s callous words.

About The Author