Michael Oher says ‘The Blind Side’ felt like a ‘comedy about someone else’ in first interview since filing lawsuit

Former NFL star Michael Oher has broken his silence on the lawsuit he filed last year that accused Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy of deceiving him into a conservatorship and unfairly profiting from the book and movie “The Blind Side,” which centered on the couple’s relationship with Oher.

In an interview with the New York Times magazine published on Sunday, Oher lamented how the movie, released in 2009 just two months into his first NFL season, stripped his true identity.

“That’s my heartbreak right there,” Oher said. “It was as soon as I got there, I was defined.”

In a lawsuit that made headlines last August, Oher alleged that the Tuohys lied about adopting him, instead placing him into a conservatorship that gave the couple control over Oher’s finances and major life decisions. He also accused them of excluding him from the money they made from “The Blind Side.”

A Tennessee judge swiftly ended the conservatorship but the rest of the lawsuit has continued, with the Tuohys denying Oher’s accusations and alleging that Oher received more than $138,000 in proceeds from the book and movie.

Based on Michael Lewis’ 2006 book, “The Blind Side” earned Sandra Bullock an Oscar for her portrayal of Leigh Anne and was nominated for Best Picture. However, both narratives largely left out Oher’s perspective and instead leaned into white savior tropes where the Tuohy couple rescued a poor and hopeless Oher.

Oher criticized the film especially for its disparaging depiction of him as unintelligent and clueless, including about football, which he said led the NFL to wonder if he could “read a playbook.”

While the movie and book suggest Oher knew little about football when he joined a nearly all-white private high school, a Memphis daily newspaper named him to the All-Metro team that same season. Oher kept a clipping of the paper on his phone as proof that he was recognized for his talent before the Tuohys entered his life.

Oher pointed out another similar discrepancy between his narrative and the Tuohys’: While the Tuohys claimed they took him in during the spring of his junior year, Oher remembers moving in with them during the summer, which would mean he was already named the top college-football recruit in the country before he began living in the Tuohys’ home.

Oher’s reaction to first watching the movie was bewilderment, he told the magazine.

“It seemed kind of funny to me, to tell you the truth, like it was a comedy about someone else,” he said, expressing fear that public perceptions of him based on the movie might affect his children. “If my kids can’t do something in class, will their teacher think, ‘their dad is dumb — is that why they’re not getting it?’”

Despite his grievances about the Tuohys’ misuse of his image, Oher described having fond memories of his time with them and acknowledged that others might view his actions as ungrateful. He explained that he went along with the family’s narrative for decades because his focus was on his NFL career.

Oher played five seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, winning a Super Bowl in 2013, and later played for the Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers before retiring in 2017. He said he is now working on returning to his pre-“The Blind Side” self.

“For a long time, I was so angry mentally,” he said. “With what I was going through. I want to be the person I was before ‘The Blind Side,’ personality-wise. I’m still working on it.”

Oher also recounted the impact of the Tuohys taking him in at a young age.

“The first time I heard ‘I love you,’ it was Sean and Leigh Anne saying it,” he said. “When that happens at 18, you become vulnerable. You let your guard down and then you get everything stripped from you.”