Michael Oher is in a legal battle with the Tuohy family, which has led to a 2017 episode of Below Deck featuring Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy resurfacing online. The clip shows Sean claiming that he required script approval for the film The Blind Side. Sean discusses how the team from The Blind Side gained the right to use his family’s name.
“The writer of the book, he and I went to school together since we were five years old,” Sean says, referencing writing Michael Lewis who wrote the book, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, per Entertainment Tonight. “So I get a call — Steven Spielberg, Harvey Weinstein — I had to give them the rights to use our name, and I said, ‘I’ll give you the rights if I get to read the script and approve it or un-approve it.’ So, sure enough, seven months later we get an envelope in the mail.”
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The video comes as Oher claims the Tuohy family never adopted him and he was tricked into signing a document that made them his conservators shortly after he turned 18 in 2004. Oher filed the petition on Monday and says he thought the papers were part of the adoption process, but the papers actually gave the Tuohy’s legal authority to make business deals in his name.
Oher wants his conservatorship terminated, and the Tuohy family attorneys have agreed to do. “If that’s what he wants to do is terminate it, we’re glad to do so,” attorney Randall Fishman said in a press conference in Memphis. “As a matter of fact, it is our intent to offer to enter into a consent order as it relates to the conservatorship, and then if they have other issues, we’ll deal with them.”
Lewis recently spoke to The Washington Post about the ordeal. “What I feel really sad about is I watched the whole thing up close,” Lewis said. “They showered him 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 Blind Side, a story about Oher’s life, hit theatres in 2009 and made $300 million at the box office. The movie stars Quinton Aaron, Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock who won an Academy Award for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy.
