Christina Hendricks revealed whether she contacted Natalia Grace‘s adoptive mother Cynthia Mans after being cast to play her on Good American Family.
“I did not speak to Cynthia. That wasn’t something that was even on the page for us,” Hendricks, 49, exclusively told Us Weekly. “This is my interpretation, so I don’t know if other cast [members] did that. I don’t believe they [reached out to anyone], but I don’t want to speak for anyone else. But this was definitely me playing a character that was on this page while having the fortune to take clues and watch the information that they had provided out there in the world so far [without making contact].”
Hendricks wanted to present her own interpretation of the character despite the events being based on real events, adding, “In some ways, from what might already be out there, the characters might seem bigger than life or that it’s hard to even believe that some of these behaviors are happening. It really was an artistic call about what you think is going to best represent this show and play in with the other characters. It was also about taking cues and inspirations from these real life people — but then making it our own.”
Good American Family, which premiered in March, is based on Natalia Grace, who made headlines when she was adopted by Kristine and Michael Barnett as a child — only to accuse them of abandoning her. The Barnetts later accused Grace of secretly being an adult masquerading as a child and in 2012 petitioned to change Grace’s birth records to legally change her age from 8 to 22.
Natalia Grace’s Abandonment Scandal: Where Are the Key Players Now?
Kristine and Michael were charged in 2019 with multiple counts of neglecting a dependent. The charges resulted in a five-year investigation, during which they accused Grace of threatening to harm them and their sons. Michael was found not guilty and the case against Kristine was dismissed.
Mans, meanwhile, invited Grace to live with her, her husband and their 10 children. The couple petitioned to become Grace’s legal guardians in 2016 but a hearing was required to determine whether she was a legal adult.
Grace was declared an adult but remained with the Manses and they legally adopted her in 2023. Later that same year, Grace and the Mans family had a falling out amid claims they had allegedly abused her. Cynthia and Antwon denied the accusations and Natalia refused to address the scandal on her Investigation Discovery series.
“We keep [the events in the show] to a very, very specific time,” Hendricks noted to Us. “It’s an ongoing story that’s out there in the world. You could do series after series after series of it. So we decided to remain in this very specific time.”
Hendricks revealed she had mere hours to prepare to play Natalia Grace’s third adoptive mother.
“I got cast 30 hours before I was on set. So I had to work very, very quickly,” she recalled. “I had an opportunity to read the scripts and I did watch Investigation Discovery’s The Curious Case of Natalia Grace series that’s out there to try and get as much information as possible. Then I worked with a dialect coach because we wanted Cynthia to stand out in a little bit of a different way from the [Barnetts]. So I did all of the big fittings and everything in 30 hours and then I was on set.”
Actors Who Portrayed Real People in Movies and TV Shows
Hendricks called it a “fast and furious” process. “But I digested as much as I could in that amount of time,” she continued. “I actually was unfamiliar with the story. Then when they reached out to me, I turned to my husband [George Bianchini] and I was like, ‘Oh, this is this wild script.’ And he was like, ‘I know all about that.’ So I think there’s a fair amount of people who do know about it.”
The objective for Hendricks was to not pick a side in the story.
“I also think these characters are just complicated. There are facts that have been proven to be true. But the way that I played Cynthia was very much what was in that script and what our angle was at that time,” she said. “This is an interpretation of this story. This is a dramatization of this story. Wwe wanted to make sure — and everyone was very careful — to stick to the script that we were working on rather than going off of other things that maybe you’ve heard. We wanted to stay true to the script.”
New episodes of Good American Family premiere Wednesdays on Hulu.
