Gypsy Rose Blanchard on life after prison, pregnancy and her plans for the future

But there’s a reason her case has sparked so much interest, from media coverage to documentaries and TV shows. From the age of 3 months, the girl from Springfield, Missouri, was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a disorder where a parent or carer fakes illness or injuries in their child to gain attention and sympathy.

Blanchard’s mother told doctors her daughter had muscular dystrophy, cancer and seizures, and forced her to go along with the charade by physically abusing her.

In June 2015, Blanchard, then aged 23, and her boyfriend at the time, Nicholas Godejohn, carried out their plan to kill DeeDee. Godejohn was sentenced to life in prison, while Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years for her part in planning the murder.

Looking back, Blanchard says prison life wasn’t too different from growing up with her mother.

“Before I went into prison, my freedom was so limited and so there is this sort of whole new world that opened up when I got released,” she says.

“It was like being born for the first time all over again … in the last six months, I feel like I’ve lived 10 years.”

What she didn’t expect was just how much the world would change during the years she was in prison.

“The phones looked different, everything looked so different – the cars looked different … in prison, we didn’t have, like, FaceTime or Skype or any sort of video call. I was not able to have internet access, so much of the life changes that happened around the world, I was cut off from.

“I thought that I would have jumped back into society and just know how to navigate everything right away, but it turned out to be a little more challenging.

“Everything I’ve missed, I’m trying to make up for.”

But perhaps the biggest challenge she’s faced as a free woman is the scrutiny from the public. As seen on the show, her case was obsessively documented on social media. Fans counted down the days until her release, and when she was recognised in public, she was pursued relentlessly by paparazzi.

“I think that half the population understands and the other half misunderstands, and all I can do is put my best foot forward to show who I truly am,” she shares.

“And I think that it’s up to the public – if the public wants to view me or certain individuals want to view me a certain way, I don’t think that there’s anything that I could say or do to change their mind.”

For Blanchard, filming Life After Lockup was “absolutely necessary” to show the public her true self.

“If people are going to get to know me, they need to know all of me without barriers. And so, thankfully, we had an amazing crew working on the show. We had an amazing showrunner that I could feel comfortable enough with to break down those walls.

“I was counting how many times I cried on the show, just because I could be so vulnerable with everybody,” she shares. “And so it was nice to have such a loving and accepting crew to work around.”

It’s not just the details of the case itself that have intrigued the public, but Blanchard’s personal life.

While in prison, she married Ryan Anderson, reuniting with him when she was released. But in April this year, she announced that she and Anderson were divorcing.

She then rekindled her relationship with ex-boyfriend Ken Urker, and the couple recently announced a surprise pregnancy. Amid it all, she had to watch her relationship with Anderson break down on screen.

“It was extremely difficult to watch. Some episodes were a lot harder to watch than others,” she confesses.

“I found myself kind of going through the same emotions all over again by rewatching it, I cried. I’m not gonna lie, I cried for the finale. And the episodes leading up to it, because there was so much change going on in my life at that time that it brought back all those emotions.”

Now as she prepares to become a mother – the pregnancy has been “pretty easy” so far – she’s looking forward to giving her child everything she didn’t get while growing up.

“I was held back from that. So the thing that I’m most looking forward to is those milestone moments with my child – the first steps, the first bike ride, all of that. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

Now, Blanchard hopes she, Urker, and their child get their “happily ever after”.

“I hope that we could be at peace, [that] we could have a level of happiness despite the past, the stigma that follows me. I’m hoping that someday I can break that and I could live a happy, as close to normal life as possible for us.”

Outside of motherhood and family life, she’s eager to travel as soon as her parole ends in 11 months.

“I have been wanting to come to New Zealand for a very long time, so I’d love to go there,” she says.

“I want to experience the world, experience different cultures. Career-wise, I’m not sure, but I know whatever I end up doing, I’ll put my 110% into.”

It’s this side of her that Blanchard hopes viewers will get to see in the show.

“They have probably, maybe, already heard of me, and going back to that prison version of myself that people have in their minds – I hope that when they watch it, they can see me as more than just that and have a level of understanding,” she explains.

She wants those watching to know that “your past does not define your future”.

“Regardless of everything that I went through in my past, I am now carving out a new future for myself. And I’m going to go through mistakes and mishaps and wrong choices, but that’s part of life.

“That makes life worth living.”

Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup is available to watch on TVNZ+

Bethany Reitsma is an Auckland-based journalist covering lifestyle and entertainment stories who joined the Herald in 2019. She specialises in telling Kiwis’ real-life stories, money-saving hacks and anything even remotely related to coffee.