Berkeley’s Michael Lewis defends ‘Blind Side’ family Michael Oher sued

Longtime Berkeley resident Michael Lewis has had some explaining to do this week regarding “The Blind Side,” the movie based on Lewis’ 2006 book about football player Michael Oher. Oher, the story’s heroic central figure, alleged in court Monday that he’s been cheated out of making millions from the 2009 film about his life.

As ESPN first reported, Oher is suing the Tuohy family — who were portrayed in the book’s film adaptation as kind-hearted, wealthy white saviors who lifted Oher, a troubled Black kid, out of poverty and into an NFL career — for allegedly tricking him into signing a conservatorship, an arrangement that gave the Tuohys the legal right to make deals and business decisions in his name. The former NFL offensive lineman alleges the conservatorship was presented to him as basically an adoption, with the only distinction being that the conservatorship was necessary because he was already 18 when he signed it. Oher says the Tuohys never actually adopted him, and furthermore that the conservatorship made him lose out on millions in royalties from the Oscar-winning movie about his life.

An adoption would have made Oher a legal member of the Tuohy family and given him full autonomy on financial decisions. A conservatorship instead surrendered that autonomy to Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who “enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher,” per the lawsuit. The filing claims Oher did not discover the full implications of this distinction until February of this year.

This brings us to Lewis, whose book on Oher, titled “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” focused on Oher’s life story, including how the Tuohys brought him into their life to help him make it to Ole Miss after noticing his athletic gifts. In an interview with the Washington Post published Wednesday, Lewis backed the Tuohys, claiming that Oher should direct his anger towards “the Hollywood studio system.”

“Michael Oher should join the writers strike,” Lewis told the Post. “It’s outrageous how Hollywood accounting works, but the money is not in the Tuohys’ pockets.” (It is worth noting that Lewis and Sean Tuohy were childhood friends, something that Lewis acknowledged in his book.)

Lewis also provided more details on the money he got from the movie rights. He told the Post that he initially sold the rights to the studio formerly known as 20th Century Fox, which netted him $70,000. But a small company bankrolled by the Tuohys’ neighbor and FedEx CEO Fred Smith ended up making the movie instead, and Warner Brothers distributed it. That deal netted him and the Tuohys $350,000 each, according to Lewis. The Tuohys claimed they distributed their share evenly among their family members, including Oher.

But Oher’s attorney, J. Gerard Stranch IV, told ESPN that Oher’s resentment of the book and movie about his life goes beyond finances. “Mike’s relationship with the Tuohy family started to decline when he discovered that he was portrayed in the movie as unintelligent,” Stranch told ESPN. “Their relationship continued to deteriorate as he learned that he was the only member of the family not receiving royalty checks from the movie, and it was permanently fractured when he realized he wasn’t adopted and a part of the family.” 

It’s true that in the 2009 film, Oher is portrayed as a slow-witted kid who needed Leigh Anne Tuoy to teach him how to play football. That depiction of Oher as “dumb” may be directly related to Lewis, given how he’s advanced that narrative.

In a 2007 talk with a group at Google, Lewis joked about Oher’s intelligence, saying, “He’s on the dean’s list at Ole Miss, which says a lot about the dean’s list at Ole Miss.” The crowd then erupted into laughter and applause before Lewis went on about how schools like the one Oher attended “exist mainly to sustain a football team” — a fair point, were it not led by such a condescending joke at the expense of a young man whose life story he had mined for a book.

In the nearly 16 years since that comment, Lewis’s criticisms of Oher’s intelligence haven’t changed much.

“What I feel really sad about is I watched the whole thing up close,” Lewis told the Post. “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.”

Oher’s lawsuit asked a judge to officially end the Tuohys’ conservatorship, which the Tuohys have since said they would do. It also requested that the Tuohys be prevented from using Oher’s name and likeness in the future, that the court look into all the money the family made off Oher’s name, and that the Tuohy family pay him his fair share of whatever profits were withheld from him, as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.