Gypsy-Rose Blanchard is struggling with life in the public eye.
As the 33-year-old prepared to attend her first meet-and-greet book signing for her memoir, “My Time to Stand,” a plethora of threats nearly cancelled the event. On the April 28 episode of Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up, Gypsy-Rose began to worry about her safety.
“As with most things in our world, it will not be smooth,” her manager and former defense attorney Mike Stanfield told her on the phone. “Let’s talk about the bumps here. The first thing is that over the weekend, the trolls came after the bookstore hardcore. They were calling the bookstore nonstop, they have been sending them tons of emails, putting tons of bad reviews the works.”
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BenBella Books; Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Gypsy-Rose Blanchard
Admitting she was “not surprised” that her “hate following” was attempting to ruin the signing, Gypsy-Rose expressed concerns about having an in-person gathering.
“It’s pretty scary whenever you have trolls online that cross over into the real world,” she explained. “I have a lot of anxiety. I don’t want to put myself at risk situations where everybody in creation knows where I’m going to be and at what time.”
“The fear that I have right now is I’m carrying an innocent life,” Gypsy-Rose, who was pregnant with her first child at the time, shared. “It’s hard to be a carrier when a lot of people want to see you fail or hurt you, or want to harm you.”
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While Stanfield assured her there would be plenty of security, both Gypsy-Rose and her boyfriend, Ken Urker, questioned if she should go through with it.
“I don’t want you to be put in a situation where you might be in harm’s way, even if it’s just somebody harassing you verbally,” he said.
“I feel like this is a bad idea — I don’t think it’s good for my safety,” she agreed. “This is just different from anything I’ve ever done before. This is the first time that I [have] ever exposed to the public, ‘You can meet her at this time, at this location.’ This is how people get murdered.”
Still, she insisted that she had to go through with it, saying, “It’s part of the book launch. It’s so important to sell these 600 books.”
“I’ve seen a lot of people online like threaten to come harass her,” Ken told cameras. “It gets me worked up. I hate these people. I’s just sad. This is the first time people know where she’s going to be, so it gives them an opportunity to organize and premeditate attacking her possibly. That’s my girlfriend, and she’s carrying my child, so that’s my whole world right there.”
Gypsy-Rose Blanchard-Anderson/Instagram
Gypsy-Rose Blanchard
Later in the episode, Stanfield and the bookstore called in local authorities to set up protection after receiving “tips” about certain individuals planning to cause “a disruption.”
“We just had a funerary wreath brought to the bookstore location, and on the card it has listed as the deceased’s name Claudine and Gypsy Blanchard,” Stanfield said, referring to Gypsy-Rose and her late mother Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. “They need to get rid of it. So we are turning this over to the police, because that seems marginally threatening to me.”
A victim of Munchausen by proxy, Gypsy was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 after she pleaded guilty to murder for her role in the killing of her mother, Dee Dee. In 2023, she qualified for early release after serving 85 percent of her sentence.
When she finally arrived, Gypsy-Rose realized how many people showed up just to support her.
“Writing the book is an achievement, but having it be released out into the world, that’s the goal here,” she said, adding: “Going into anything with uncertainty of what could happen, and then you play out all the outcomes that could happen, definitely I got psyched out by the internet and the trolls. So yeah, they got to my head, and they made me fearful at first, but we got through it.”
“We made it,” she continued. “The book staff was amazing for making it safe for me. It was just nice to meet really genuine supporters. One lady even said she went through something similar to me. So it was really nice to actually get to face-to-face, meet some of these people that this book is for. It makes all of the stress worth it.”
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Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
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