Just Wondering, Is 'I Care A Lot' Based On A True Story?

Now that you've watched Netflix's latest hit movie I Care A Lot starring Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, and Dianne Wiest, and you've spent a few hours trying to come to terms with your feelings about the ending, you're probably sitting with your emotions and wondering, "Um, wait a sec, was that f*cked up thrill-ride based on a true story?"

A quick recap for those of who you had a few too many glasses of wine while watching: The new dark comedy centers on Rosamund's Marla Grayson, a chic, composed, and sharp-witted woman with a thriving "business" (some might call it a scam) as a court-appointed legal guardian for (often elderly) people who are unable to take care of themselves.

Sounds super sweet and saint-like, right? Not so fast. When Marla says "caring is my job," she's not talking about the old folks—she locks them up in nursing homes and residency programs. Nope, Marla's referring to the legal control of her clients' wealth and assets, which she claims full autonomy over as soon as the court approves the guardianship. Her caring business is a con, but unfortunately it's not technically a crime—defrauding innocent people and auctioning off their assets to enrich yourself is somehow a completely legal loophole of the American system.

For anyone with an elderly relative, a friend, or just a general sense of empathy, the plot is, um, highly disturbing. So you'll be happy to learn that no, I Care A Lot is *not* based on one specific true story. And Marla Grayson is not a real person. Well, not exactly, anyways. The movie is, however, drawn from numerous real-life guardianship scams that target the wealth and independence of older, vulnerable Americans.

I CARE A LOT/NETFLIX

Sadly, these kinds of situations occur far more often than you'd think. Here's what the movie's director and writer J Blakeson said in a TIFF interview in 2020:

"The idea first came when I heard news stories about these predatory legal guardians who were exploiting this legal loophole and exploiting the vulnerability in the system to take advantage of older people, basically stripping them of their life and assets to fill their own pockets."

To J, these stories were "horrifying" but "not uncommon." So while the film is not based on any one specific true story, J has no illusions that this type of stuff does really happen in real life. He elaborated on his point of view in a conversation with Collider:

"In Marla's approach, a lot of it happens unfortunately. It's true to life in the fact that there are lots of these predatory guardians who do prey on vulnerable and elderly people, and sort of entrap them in these guardianships and basically sort of strip their life apart. The true life stories of it are really quite harrowing and horrifying so unfortunately, yeah, it does happen."

In essence, I Care A Lot exposes how America's flawed legal guardian system can be manipulated for profit and power in quotidian ways. Marla Grayson is a fictional character, yes, but people like her do exist. Take April Parks, a former Nevada legal guardian who—as the New Yorker reported in 2017—pled guilty to six felonies, including two counts of elder exploitation.

April owned a professional guardian company and had hundreds of clients, whom she legally entrapped through court hearings. She went to jail, but left many of her victims committed to facilities, severely over-medicated, and trapped in the faulty guardianship system forever. The easy manipulation of the guardianship arrangement is yet another example of the United States legal system failing to protect its citizens.

I Care A Lot reveals the loopholes in America's conservatorship system, and America's negligent treatment of its senior citizens. Rosamund Pike phrased it perfectly when she accepted the Golden Globe for Best Actress and thanked "America's broken legal system for making it possible to make stories like this." CALL 'EM OUT.

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This article originally appeared on Cosmopolitan.com. Minor edits have been made by the Cosmo.ph editors.

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