But the biggest sign of all is her starring role — the most taxing, transformative and challenging of her career — in The Act, which is based on a Buzzfeed article and the HBO documentary, Mommy Dead & Dearest. It follows the life of Blanchard (King), a young woman who successfully conspired with her boyfriend to kill her mother Dee Dee (Oscar winner Arquette) after years of abuse. The story traces the twisted mother-daughter relationship in an attempt to better understand how life got so dark for Gypsy: Dee Dee had Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, a mental health condition in which a caretaker makes up or causes illness for someone in their care, often a child. Dee Dee psychologically and physically tortured Gypsy for years, keeping her trapped at home in a wheelchair while putting her through surgeries and medical procedures she didn’t need. The new series, King specifies, “goes beyond the headlines” and “tracks the characters behind closed doors” in hopes of adding depth to a story that’s largely been treated by audiences as a macabre, monstrous tale, rather than as the history of a very real young woman who was abused. “Her story is beyond comprehension,” King says.