SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. — As the attorneys representing the Tuohy family fired back at Michael Oher with their own version of events, the man who played him in the 2009 film also spoke out Wednesday about his interaction with Oher and his thoughts on the case.
Actor Quinton Aaron, who played Michael Oher in the movie "The Blind Side," says he only actually met Oher once, several years after the film had come out.
Aaron told the Daily Mail on Wednesday he assumed everything with the family was on the up and up, but he figured there were inaccuracies in the story.
“I feel like we knew going in that some details weren’t as it happened in real life… Most times they do that.” Aaron said.
The Tuohys, conversely, visited the set a few times, according to Aaron.
Attorneys representing the family said on Wednesday Oher had been estranged from the family for the past decade, but he was well aware he was in a conservatorship, including making reference to it in his 2011 memoir.
“He did all of his own finances. He entered his own contracts, he had his own agents, frankly no one thought about it. The Touhys have said on the record more than once since this started they'll be glad to enter whatever they want to terminate the conservatorship,” attorney Randall Fishman said.
They added Oher had received a roughly $100,000 share from the profits of the movie, exactly the same as every other member of the family.
“Michael got every dime. Every dime he had coming,” Fishman said
Oher was limited by NCAA rules at the time preventing him from making money on the film based on his life.
Aaron thinks that may have made the difference. He told the Daily Mail,
“The way to prevent something like this from happening again, I think, is that all parties that are relevant to the story need to be involved in the making of the story from beginning to finish,”
The attorneys for the Tuohy family say Oher was initially placed into the conservatorship in the first place in order to allow him to play for Ole Miss. As the Tuohys were official boosters of the school, he needed to be in the family in order to abide by NCAA guidelines.
