True-crime doc The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard is airing on Lifetime this weekend

The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard
The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Image credit: Lifetime)

If you're a lover of true-crime documentaries, you're definitely going to want to tune into this one: The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard tells the shocking story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the then-23-year-old woman who plead guilty in 2016 to killing her mother Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard, after years of her parent's Munchausen by proxy abuse. 

Blanchard and her story are back dominating headlines after the Chillicothe Correctional Center inmate was officially released early from prison on Thursday, December 28, having served 85% of her 10-year sentence. 

Now you can relive every detail of the inconceivable case with the new six-part docuseries, which airs from Friday, January 5, through Sunday, January 7, on Lifetime. Each nightly installment is comprised of two hourlong episodes, airing at 8 pm ET/PT. 

Those with cable packages can watch on their local Lifetime channel, but cable-cutters can also tune in online with a live TV streaming service that carries Lifetime, such as FuboHulu with Live TVSling TV and Philo TV

Unlike other TV and film depictions of Blanchard's story, the Lifetime docuseries is reportedly the first time that Blanchard herself will disclose several never-before-heard revelations about the case, including insights into her time in prison and her marriage to Ryan Anderson. 

She told The Hollywood Reporter about why she was finally ready to come forward so candidly in the new doc special: "I think the biggest reason why I held back all this time, and am kind of coming forward now, is because I just wasn't emotionally ready at the time. There are a lot of things to unpack in my life — more than just with my mother. And so I think at the time of doing my previous interviews, everything was so surrounded around my mother and I."

Blanchard continued: "I think now I'm coming to a place where I could be more confident to open up a little bit more and feel like I’m in a safe space enough to [open up]. That's why I'm so candid in this documentary."

As mentioned, the new documentary special is far from the first time that Gypsy Rose Blanchard's intriguing story has served as the subject of a compelling TV series or movie. Joey King portrayed Gypsy in the 2019 Hulu limited series The Act, opposite Patricia Arquette as Dee Dee Blanchard. And in the Ryan Murphy Netflix series The Politician, the characters of Infinity Jackson, Ricardo and Dusty Jackson were reportedly based on Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Nicholas Godejohn and Dee Dee Blanchard, respectively. 

In 2017, HBO produced the documentary film Mommy Dead and Dearest, directed by Erin Lee Carr, about the real-life murder and the subjects' fraught mother-daughter relationship, which you can stream with a Max subscription. 

Christina Izzo

Christina Izzo is the Deputy Editor of My Imperfect Life. More generally, she is a writer-editor covering food and drink, travel, lifestyle and culture in New York City. She was previously the Features Editor at Rachael Ray In Season and Reveal, as well as the Food & Drink Editor and chief restaurant critic at Time Out New York. 

When she’s not doing all that, she can probably be found eating cheese somewhere.