Gypsy Rose Blanchard, subject of The Act, is released from prison early

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the woman whose life story and involvement in the murder of her mother Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard served as the inspiration for the Emmy award-winning Hulu limited series The Act, has been released from prison roughly two years early. 

Karen Pojmann, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, confirmed to EW that Gypsy had been discharged from Chillicothe Correctional Center at 3:30 a.m. on Thursday.

Gypsy was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for her role in her mother's 2015 death. Her then-boyfriend, Nick Godejohn, was also charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole after he stabbed Dee Dee 17 times while Gypsy hid in the bathroom. 

Following their arrests, it was revealed that Dee Dee had lied for years about her daughter having a host of serious medical conditions, including leukemia and muscular dystrophy, which required her to utilize a wheelchair and feeding tube when Gypsy was actually physically healthy.

At the time, the Associated Press reported that Gypsy’s trial attorney Michael Stanfield claimed that Dee Dee suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness that the Cleveland Clinic describes as a person acting “as if an individual he or she is caring for has a physical or mental illness when the person is not really sick."

Gypsy and Nick later separated after the killing and, in 2022, she married Ryan Scott Anderson. She was portrayed onscreen by Joey King in The Act, with Patricia Arquette winning an Emmy for her performance as Dee Dee. The case was also explored in Erin Lee Carr's 2017 HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest. A forthcoming Lifetime docuseries, titled The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, is set to premiere on Jan. 5. 

In a new PEOPLE interview, Gypsy said that she regrets killing her mother “every single day.” 

"She didn't deserve that," she told the outlet. "She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn't educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior."

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