Michael Lewis, the author of the book that “The Blind Side” was based on, says the “Hollywood studio system” is to blame for the ongoing feud between the Tuohy family and former NFL offensive lineman Michael Oher.
In an interview on Wednesday with the Washington Post, Lewis said that after agents and fees, each member of the Tuohy family earned roughly $350,000 from the commercially successful and Oscar-winning film. He also said the Tuohys planned to share the royalties with family members, including Oher, but Oher started to decline his royalty checks. Lewis believed that the family deposited Oher’s share in a trust for his son.
“Everybody should be mad at the Hollywood studio system,” Lewis told the Post. “Michael Oher should join the writers’ strike. It’s outrageous how Hollywood accounting works, but the money is not in the Tuohys’ pockets.”
Lewis, a childhood friend of Sean Tuohy, also pushed back on the narrative that the Tuohy family did not support Oher. In August, Oher filed a lawsuit claiming that the Tuohy family never actually adopted him but created a conservatorship for him, granting them authority to make business deals in his name.
“What I feel really sad about is I watched the whole thing up close,” Lewis said. “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.”
During a press conference on Wednesday, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy called Oher’s claims “outlandish” as well as “hurtful and absurd.” They also claimed the lawsuit was part of a “shakedown.”
The numbers reported during this conference are different than the ones Lewis mentioned and different from Sean Tuohy’s claims that they “didn’t make any money off the movie.” According to attorneys, each member of the Tuohy family, including Oher, received roughly $100,000 in profits.
“Michael got every dime, every dime he had coming,” the Tuohy’s attorney Randall Fishman said on Wednesday.
