How a fake dead girlfriend ruined football star Manti Te’o’s life
Los Gatos, CALIFORNIA — The Netflix doc “The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist” revisits the Manti Te’o catfishing scandal—and includes eye-opening interviews with Te’o and his tormentor, Naya Tuiasosopo.
Yet in truth, Te’o’s saga remains a nightmare of unwarranted humiliation and lasting, career-derailing damage, with Te’o’s psychological well-being and NFL prospects both rocked by the revelation that he had been the victim of a catfishing ruse. Te’o was transformed from a hero into a figure of ridicule even though, as The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist contends, he’s actually someone who deserves our pity and compassion.
The premiere installment of Season 2 of Netflix’s non-fiction series Untold, The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist (Aug. 16) is a two-hour examination of a tawdry ordeal that doubles as an act of confession, air-clearing, and healing for its two subjects. Te’o sits down for an extensive interview with directors Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku, detailing his stratospheric highs and dismal lows and, in doing so, answering many of the questions that dominated TV and talk radio in the wake of his national embarrassment.
Te’o, however, is only one side of this coin, and The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist benefits from the additional participation of Naya Tuiasosopo, the individual who struck up an online and phone/text romance with Te’o by posing as Lennay Kekua, a fictitious female. In the years since their relationship became fodder for CNN, ESPN and Saturday Night Live, Tuiasosopo has come out as a transgender woman, and though Duffy and Vainuku’s two-part episode notes that no one interviewed for this documentary was aware of her transition at the time of filming, it’s nonetheless central to the proceedings.
Candid and apologetic—albeit to a degree that likely won’t satisfy every viewer—Tuiasosopo fills in the gaps regarding how this all came to be. In the process, she paints this ruse-gone-awry as a result of her identity-related challenges, which may not be much of an excuse for the monumental and enduring harm she caused but at least explains the underpinnings of this mess.