Former NFL star Michael Oher, whose story inspired the Oscar-nominated film The Blind Side, has said he felt duped by his “adoptive” parents, who spun his personal story into a $8 million profit for themselves, while he claims to have received little to nothing.
The one-time Super Bowl champion sat down with The New York Times Magazine to break his silence on his high-profile lawsuit against Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, the wealthy Memphis couple who claimed to have adopted Oher when he was a highschooler in 2004. In reality, they established a conservatorship over the 18-year-old, which Oher only discovered in February 2023, prompting him to file his lawsuit against them last August.
“The first time I heard ‘I love you,’ it was Sean and Leigh Anne [Tuohy] saying it,” Oher told the magazine. “When that happens at 18, you become vulnerable. You let your guard down and then you get everything stripped from you. It turns into a hurt feeling.”
“I don’t want to make this about race, but what I found out was that nobody says ‘I love you’ more than coaches and white people,” he added. “When Black people say it, they mean it.”
While a judge dissolved the conservatorship in September, other matters of the suit are ongoing. Oher claims the Tuohys have exploited his story and image to turn a sizable profit and have repeatedly made false representations that they adopted him. (In an affidavit, Leigh Anne Tuohy claimed the family used the word adopted in a “colloquial sense, to describe the family relationship we felt … it was never meant as a legal term of art.”)
A crux of Oher’s frustrations seems to lie with how he was depicted in both a book and the Oscar-nominated 2009 film, in which actress Sandra Bullock won Best Actress for playing Leigh Anne. “It’s hard to describe my reaction,” Oher said of the impression that he wasn’t smart or a competent football player before he met the Tuohys. “It seemed kind of funny to me, to tell you the truth, like it was a comedy about someone else. It didn’t register. But social media was just starting to grow, and I started seeing stuff that I’m dumb. I’m stupid. Every article about me mentioned The Blind Side, like it was part of my name.”
Oher said the movie premiered just a few months after he was drafted to the Baltimore Ravens, believing the book negatively impacted his draft position. “The N.F.L. people were wondering if I could read a playbook,” he said.
As the civil suit carries on, Oher is adamant his case isn’t necessarily about money but the idea that his identity is now wrapped up in what he perceives to be a false narrative about his life. “For a long time, I was so angry mentally,” Oher said. “With what I was going through. I want to be the person I was before The Blind Side, personality-wise. I’m still working on it.”