Suggesting that any attempt to tell the story of the John Paul Getty III kidnapping might be more trouble than it’s actually worth, members of the Getty family are threatening to sue producer Danny Boyle over his upcoming FX miniseries, Trust. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ariadne Getty—sister of the formerly kidnapped John Paul III—is pissed at Boyle because she says his show makes it look like her family was complicit to some degree in the crime.
“It is ironic that you have titled your television series Trust,” Getty’s lawyer wrote, addressing Boyle and setting the rest of us up for one heck of a legal zinger: “More fitting titles would be Lies or Mistrust, since the defamatory story it tells about the Gettys colluding in the kidnapping is false and misleading, and viewers rightly ought to mistrust it.” Boom! (This summer: Donald Sutherland stars in Falsehoods, Or Possible Misrepresentations Of Reality, Perhaps, only on FX!)
Getty is demanding that Boyle release all of the episodes of the miniseries to her for review, so that she and her family can determine to their own satisfaction whether the show actually contends that they were involved in John Paul III’s disappearance. This isn’t the first time FX has landed in legal trouble in recent months for its attempts to depict real-life events, either; the network is still facing a lawsuit from actress Olivia De Havilland over her portrayal in Ryan Murphy’s Feud. Meanwhile, the other recent Getty kidnapping project—Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World, which Ariadne Getty wasn’t crazy about, either—faced its own now-infamous troubles last year, when star Kevin Spacey was kicked out of the movie after it was already filmed, over allegations of sexual harassment and assault.