Michael Oher: ‘Nobody says ‘I love you’ more than coaches and white people’

One year ago, former Baltimore Raven Michael Oher filed a lawsuit against the Tuohy family. A version of their story became the Oscar-winning drama The Blind Side, in which the Tuohy family claimed that they “adopted” a Black kid from the wrong side of the tracks and managed to make him into a football star. As it turned out, none of that was true. The Tuohys never adopted Michael Oher, they put him in a janky conservatorship which was only removed last October. The Tuohys also sold Michael’s life rights without his permission (a function of the conservatorship) and profited from The Blind Side and didn’t share those millions with Oher. Oher waited until his pro football career was over to begin unraveling his real life story and how many lies he was told by the Tuohys. Well, Oher has given his first interview since suing the Tuohys, a case which is still working its way through the court system. You can read the full piece here (it’s a long read), but here are some highlights via People:

In a new interview with The New York Times Magazine published on Sunday, Aug. 18, over a year after he first filed the suit, the NFL alum recalled his time living with the wealthy, Memphis-based family — and why, despite what the 2009 film portrays, he feels like they deceived him.

“The first time I heard ‘I love you,’ it was Sean and Leigh Anne [Tuohy] saying it. When that happens at 18, you become vulnerable,” he told the magazine. “You let your guard down and then you get everything stripped from you. It turns into a hurt feeling.” After a brief pause, he continued, “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. When Black people say it, they mean it.”

Oher, now 38, still expressed fond feelings about the comfort and care Sean and Leigh Ann provided him. “Honestly, it was great,” he said of his time with the family, who bought him clothes and set him up with a tutor — to make him eligible to play college football — among other things. “I had a bed to stay on. I was eating good. They got me a truck,” he added of his time with Sean, Leigh Anne and their two kids.

However, The Blind Side, Oher said, gave him an entirely new — and very public — identity that did not accurately reflect who he was as an athlete or person. While he focused on football, Sean and Leigh Ann aided the creation of the movie, which began as a book by Michael Lewis, using their “narrative,” Oher said, also detailing how his portrayal came off as inaccurate.

Reflecting on the release of The Blind Side, which coincided with the beginning of his NFL career, Oher told The New York Times Magazine, “That’s my heartbreak right there. … It was as soon as I got there, I was defined.”

Oher did not attend the film’s premiere, but was persuaded to watch it about a month after its release. “It’s hard to describe my reaction. It seemed kind of funny to me, to tell you the truth, like it was a comedy about someone else,” he told the magazine. “It didn’t register.” The biggest difference between the movie’s character and the real-life Oher, according to the athlete? It underplayed his intelligence to such a degree that it left his new coworkers questioning his capabilities. “The NFL people were wondering if I could read a playbook,” he said.

Recalling how social media “was just starting to grow” at the time of the film’s release, Oher added, “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.”

The former football tackle still worries about this portrayal impacting him — as well as his children: “If my kids can’t do something in class, will their teacher think, ‘Their dad is dumb — is that why they’re not getting it?’ ” he said.

[From People]

I also find the Tuohys’ public undermining of Michael’s intelligence to be a central part of his case and a huge reason why he’s so upset. The Tuohys were fine with not only signing away Oher’s life rights, but signing off on a portrayal of Oher as so intellectually disadvantaged that he couldn’t read or function in school without a tutor. He also addressed the timing of his lawsuit, which is basically: he was fully focused on the NFL during his career, and then when he retired, he decided to look into the Tuohys. Which is when he discovered that he had never been adopted. And again, he made millions during his NFL career – he’s not suing the Tuohys because he needs the money. He’s suing because he is owed compensation for how badly they f–ked him over and stole from him.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red, and Oher’s IG.