“Good American Family” viewers saw a shift in perspective in the Hulu drama’s fifth episode.
Titled “Too Hurty Without It,” Episode 5 puts the spotlight on Natalia Grace — portrayed by 27-year-old British actor Imogen Faith Reed — after her adoptive parents, Michael and Kristine Barnett, move and leave her on her own in a small apartment.
The episode, creator and co-showrunner Katie Robbins tells TODAY.com, was meant to make viewers question “everything they’ve seen before and their assumptions that they’ve made” surrounding Natalia and her circumstances.
“Good American Family” is a fictionalization of Grace’s true story. Born in Ukraine with a rare form of dwarfism, Grace was adopted by a New Hampshire couple in 2008, before they put her up for re-adoption in 2010, according to a 2021 document from the Court of Appeals in Indiana obtained by TODAY.com.
Grace was then adopted by Michael and Christine Barnett, who began to suspect that she was not a little girl, but a grown adult who was trying to kill them. According to the Court of Appeals document, Grace’s Ukrainian adoption paperwork stated she was born in 2003.
The couple had Grace medically and psychologically tested, before they successfully had a court order to change her birth year from 2003 to 1989, “based on age estimates provided by a primary care physician and social worker,” per the document from the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Grace has maintained that she was a child at the time of her adoption, and that Kristine Barnett told her to say she was older. “I was terrified of her. I was terrified, so when Kristine told me to tell people that I was 22, I listened because I didn’t know what she would have me do. I didn’t know what she would do to me,” Grace says in the documentary “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace.”
“She threatened me into telling people lies. At first I said, ‘No, I’m a kid,’ and I guess she just got so mad,” she continued.
According to a 2019 affidavit filed in the Tippecanoe Court in Indiana obtained by TODAY.com, a doctor at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital examined Grace and determined her age was about 8. A skeletal examination of Grace found she was 11 years old in 2012, per the affidavit.
The document from the Indiana Court of Appeals also states that in 2013, the Barnetts did in fact move Grace into two apartments in Indiana and helped her get federal disability benefits and supportive services to help her “as an adult.” The couple then relocated to Canada with their three biological children.
This is where Episode 5 starts. Prior to that, “Good American Family” was told from Kristine Barnett (Ellen Pompeo) and Michael Barnett’s (Mark Duplass) perspective, depicting Natalia as a sinister adult pretending to be a child.
The latest episode details Natalia living on her own without her walker. She struggles with everyday tasks like turning on the shower and getting into the bathtub, which makes her unable to bathe herself. Because of her small stature, she isn’t able to reach the top cabinets in the kitchen and finds it difficult to make herself a meal. She is seen spending her days in front of the television, eating junk food as the apartment becomes a mess.
All alone, at one point, she accidentally cuts her hand trying to open a can of food.
“I don’t know what to do,” Natalia says, as her hand is covered in blood. “Mommy, please mommy. I don’t know how to take care of this.”
She seeks help from a neighbor, who confuses her for a child, but Natalia tells her she’s an adult who looks young.
“I remember reading the script and thinking, ‘OK, this is going to be a big episode for me,” Reid tells TODAY.com. “It was a little daunting because it’s just me and long hours on set.”
The episode, Robbins tells TODAY.com, is the first time Natalia is seen on screen by herself.
“One might not realize it watching the first four episodes, but in those first four episodes, you’re never in a scene only with Natalia. She can only be in a scene if she’s in a scene with Kristine or Michael, because those episodes are from their perspective,” Robbins says. “So by the time you get to (Episode) 5 and you’re on the other side of that door, it’s the first time you’ve been in a room alone with her.”
As the episode continues, viewers see Natalia getting into trouble after she and the neighbor’s grandson take the bus and get lost while attempting to go to the Barnetts’ home.
She is treated poorly by adoptive parents, who after the incident have to move her to a new apartment, which happens to be on the second floor and even smaller. The hardships continue for Natalia, who feels abandoned, yet attempts to “straighten up” to earn her family’s love.
“All of a sudden you have to say, ‘Oh my gosh, all these things that have come to believe about her, were they true, or were they not true?’”
Katie Robbins
‘“All of a sudden you have to say, ‘Oh my gosh, all these things that have come to believe about her, were they true, or were they not true?’” Robbins says. “And that episode was incredibly emotional to write, and it was incredibly emotional to film.”
Robbins says that watching Reid film her solo scenes was incredibly emotional for everyone on set.
“Watching (Imogen) play those scenes, people on our crew, people who have been doing this job for decades and who have seen it all, seasoned pros, were crying watching her because of the vulnerability that she brings and because of the themes that it deals with,” Robbins adds.
Reid tells TODAY.com that the fifth episode does “such an amazing job” of showing her character’s point of view.
“She’s just been abandoned, and she’s not only 8 years old, but she has a disability, and it’s just so heartbreaking to see her go through all of that,” she says. “And for her, to just get worse and worse as we go on, because (she) can’t look after herself, Episode 5 is something that I’m genuinely so proud of.”
Viewers will continue to see life from Natalia’s perspective when Episode 6 of “Good American Family” premieres Wednesday, April 16.
