In high school, Te'o used to be an all-around big name -- cherished by way of these round him and on music for a full soccer scholarship at the University of Notre Dame. He used to be the golden boy in his Hawaii hometown, lively in his trust and handy to get alongside with.
Then, tragedy struck. His grandma died, then his girlfriend. Both on the same day.
Only, his girl friend did not sincerely die. His girlfriend, the media discovered, did not even exist.
It used to be a catfish all alongside -- with Ronaiah 'Naya' Tuiasosopo, the lady at the back of the hoax, caught in the middle.
Te'o, Tuiasosopo and the problematic 2013 hoax are the problem of a new two-part documentary, "Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist," directed by Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku, out Tuesday on Netflix.
The story of Te'o and his faux girlfriend is a standard one, however the story of Tuiasosopo -- who created the fictional girlfriend as a way to come to phrases with her very own gender dysphoria -- is much less so. Tuiasosopo has because come out as a transgender woman.
Though audiences may additionally first apprehend Te'o's name, the documentary opens with Tuiasosopo. She takes a central role for the duration of the two episodes, bringing audiences alongside on her ride of self discovery and gender identification -- formed in section with the aid of her experiences catfishing Te'o.
Maclain Way, who created the "Untold" collection with brother Chapman, about how the crew approached portraying Tuiasosopo's and Te'o's journeys as each synchronous and separate.
This dialog has been edited for size and clarity.
What made you determine to focus on Manti Te'o and Naya's story specifically?
When we acquired the information that we might be in a position to make extra "Untolds" and we might have a quantity two, this used to be a story that was once on our literal and proverbial whiteboard of sports activities ideas. It's simply continually been a white whale in the sports activities documentary space; it is some thing that my brother and I consider very well, simply type of analyzing the information media on it and all the noise.
We reached out to Naya and simply had a captivating dialog with her. It was once in all likelihood a name that used to be solely going to be 15, 20 minutes, and we ended up speaking to her for two hours. And she ran us thru simply a extraordinary ride that she's been on, a ride of self-discovery and self-identity and how she identifies as a trans woman.
And then in phrases of accomplishing out to Manti and speaking to him, I sincerely suppose a lot of humans had approached him about speaking about this story over the years. I assume there used to be a pile of documentary pitches sitting in his inbox over the direction of the years.
I assume we caught Manti at a clearly fascinating time in his life. His NFL profession used to be winding down -- I doubt that this would've been a story that he would've commented on or accomplished a certainly lengthy shape in-depth interview on whilst he was once nevertheless lively in the NFL. But he'd simply gotten married and simply had a kid, and I assume for each Naya and Manti, neither have been pretty blissful with how the media at massive protected this saga returned in 2013. I do not assume they desired that media insurance to be the length at the give up of this genuinely lengthy sentence that used to be a story between these two individuals. And so I suppose for each of them the possibility to certainly interview at length, at deep, about this story was once attractive and appealing to them. And for us as filmmakers, it's when we virtually knew, "All right, we have some thing exclusive here. I assume we can go make this documentary film."