2025-03-19T22:19:21Z Read in app Imogen Faith Reid, Ellen Pompeo, and Mark Duplass star in Hulu's "Good American Family." Disney/Ser Baffo This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? "Good American Family" premiered this week.The new Hulu show is based on the true story of Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace Barnett.Ellen Pompeo plays Kristine Barnett, Natalia Grace's adoptive mother, who said the girl was really an adult.The true story behind the new Hulu show "Good American Family" proves that reality can be stranger than fiction.The series, which premiered its first two episodes on Wednesday, opens with married parents Kristine (Ellen Pompeo) and Michael Barnett (Mark Duplass) struggling in the aftermath of an adoption that fell through. Their luck seems to turn around when Kristine receives a call from an adoption agency that a Ukrainian orphan urgently needs a new home a little girl named Natalia Grace (newcomer Imogen Faith Reid).Here's what you need to know about the new show, including the real people the show is based on and the complicated true story behind it.Natalia Grace's adoptive parents said she was an adult posing as a childNatalia Grace's story was first publicized in 2019 after her adoptive parents were charged with neglect, which they denied.Kristine and Michael Barnett, an Indiana couple who have since divorced, adopted Natalia in 2010. At the time, they were told that the girl, who has a form of dwarfism, was 6 years old.The Barnetts said they came to believe that Natalia, who they said had menstrual periods and pubic hair, was really a grown woman with a mental illness. Kristine Barnett said that Natalia terrorized their family, trying to kill them and pouring bleach into her coffee.The Barnetts successfully petitioned the court to change Natalia's legal age from 8 to 22 in 2012, making her a legal adult. They then put Natalia up in an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, in 2013 and moved their family to Canada.Natalia, who has always maintained she was a child, was left to fend for herself for years. She ended up in the care of Cynthia and Antwon Mans, another couple with multiple adopted children.After a yearslong investigation, the Barnetts were charged with neglect. Michael was acquitted of the charges in October 2022, and the charges against Kristine were dismissed in March 2023.Natalia Grace's story was previously told in a multi-season docuseries Natalia Grace on "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks." Investigation Discovery The convoluted saga was previously unpacked in a docuseries, "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace," which aired for three seasons on Investigation Discovery from 2023 to 2025. The series focused on the perspectives of several key people involved in the story.The first installment told the backstory of the case and largely focused on Michael Barnett's perspective and the Barnetts' argument that Natalia was an adult. Natalia didn't participate in that installment but was the central focus of a follow-up, dubbed "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks," in 2024."Natalia Speaks" presented the story from her perspective, saying Kristine Barnett had been abusive to her and had concocted the story (which had eerie similarities to the plot of the 2009 horror movie "Orphan") in order to get rid of her. It even featured a confrontation between Natalia and Michael, who apologized to his former adoptive daughter for his actions and said he'd also been abused by Kristine.The second installment appeared to end happily, with Natalia getting closure from Michael Barnett, taking a DNA test to determine her true age, and being formally adopted by the Mans family. However, the shocking ending of "Natalia Speaks" included a phone call that implied Natalia was at odds with the Mans family as well.The "Final Chapter," an additional four episodes released in January 2025, followed Natalia's friction with Cynthia and Antwon Mans. She left them to live with Nicole and Vince DePaul, a couple with dwarfism who'd previously tried to adopt Natalia before the Barnetts did. Nicole DePaul accused Cynthia and Antwon Mans of stealing Natalia's money, which the Mans family has denied.Today, Natalia is still living with the DePaul family, has a long-distance boyfriend in the UK named Neil, and apparently is estranged from the Manses, who remain her legal parents.Kristine Barnett has maintained in public social media posts that Natalia was an adult all along, calling her former adoptive daughter a "sociopath," and has denied all abuse allegations.'Good American Family' has been in development for years long before the docuseries aired Imogen Faith Reid plays Natalia Grace Barnett. Disney While the Natalia Grace case exploded with the premiere of the ID docuseries in 2023, showrunner Katie Robbins told Business Insider she was first approached by Hulu to do a narrative version of the story in 2020.By that time, the charges against the Barnetts had been publicized, and the show's research team was on the ground at their trials in Indiana. They were able to gather information from discovery, including depositions, medical records, Facebook messages, and texts that gave them insight into the story.Crucially, "Good American Family" is formatted to shift between perspectives, starting off from the point of view of Kristine Barnett and presenting a devious Natalia and sympathetic Kristine before shifting over to Natalia's perspective. Robbins had plenty of experience with that format she'd previously worked on the dueling-narratives Showtime drama "The Affair" (as did Robbins' "Good American Family" co-showrunner and fellow executive producer, Sarah Sutherland).For Robbins, the idea to tell the story this way arose when she was doing initial research into the case. She realized that her understanding of the story was colored differently depending on what she was reading or watching about it."I'd read an interview and I'd be like, OK, this is what this is," Robbins told BI. "And then I'd go and watch an interview on television with a different person involved in the story and I'd be like, oh my gosh, I was totally wrong. It's actually this."She describes the story as a Rorschach test, where people interpret the truth differently based on how the information is presented alongside their own personal biases and experiences.Interestingly, the telling of the real story similarly kept shifting in the ID docuseries about Natalia, with twists, turns, and shocking cliffhangers. Robbins confirmed that the docuseries premiered as she and her writers were in the process of writing and then shooting the scripted drama. "The Final Chapter," which threw into doubt the relationship between Natalia and the Mans family, who adopted her after her abandonment by the Barnetts, premiered after they'd finished post-production.Despite the updates that the final chapter provided, it didn't necessitate rewrites or reshoots; they'd already had all the information they needed to tell their story. Input from the real people involved also didn't change anything, because neither the showrunners nor the cast spoke to Natalia or the Barnetts."We would've loved to talk to Natalia, but that wasn't possible," Robbins told BI. "And so that just made the research so essential in order to try to do justice to the story.""Good American Family" airs Wednesdays on Hulu, with new episodes premiering weekly.