Based on a true story? How screenwriters approach dramatizing real-world events

TORONTO –  

Anthony Q. Farrell had one potential deal breaker when he was approached to write a comedy about Canadian runner Ben Johnson’s doping scandal.

“My first thing was: Is Ben involved?” the showrunner said on a recent video call. “This can’t be one of those things that feels like it’s exploiting him and exploiting who he is. It has to feel like it’s from him. He’s gotta be the source.”

The production company’s answer was “yes,” so Farrell’s was too.

Headlines out of Hollywood have demonstrated that’s not a universal approach, with Daryl Hannah and Pamela Anderson recently lambasting producers they accuse of distorting their stories for the sake of compelling TV. Their complaints bring to the fore questions about the legal and ethical obligations of those adapting true stories for the screen — questions writers and producers say they’ve long grappled with.

Though it’s not always possible to involve your subject in your work, Farrell felt it was particularly important in the case of “Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story,” which starts streaming on GameTV on March 26 and on Paramount Plus a day later.

“Most Caribbean-Canadian people, we’re all very protective of the Ben Johnson story. We’re very protective of Ben and want to make sure that he’s treated right. We felt like he didn’t get a fair shake,” Farrell said. 

Johnson won gold in the 100-metre sprint at the 1988 Seoul Olympics in a record 9.79 seconds, making him the fastest man in the world. Two days later, he was stripped of his medal after testing positive for a steroid. 

“Hate the Player” is a satirical six-part miniseries, which tells the story from Johnson’s perspective as he tries to produce a documentary on the topic. 

Farrell said Johnson had lengthy conversations with him, as well as actor Shamier Anderson who portrays him, and that he stopped in to visit the writers’ room. But the real-life counterparts for the other characters in the show — including rival Carl Lewis — were not.

Sometimes it’s the secondary characters who get flattened for the sake of propelling the story arc of the protagonist.

Farrell said in his case, two-dimensional side characters work in part because of the mockumentary framing. That makes it clear to the viewer that everything is from his perspective and reflect his opinion of those around him.

“Ben’s point of view is the most important part of telling the story,” he said. “Ben’s view on these other people that he didn’t care for, I think it’s important to be honest about those things … because not only is it interesting, it’s comedic, it’s funny.”

The satirical nature of the program also provides some cushion, Farrell said. Everything is amped up to 11, and nobody would walk away from the show thinking it was a faithful portrait of what happened.

But in the case of “Love Story,” the FX series featuring a depiction of American actress Daryl Hannah, the series is a drama that doesn’t give viewers a sense of which parts are factual. The show chronicles the ill-fated relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, using the book “Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy” as its source.

Earlier this month, Hannah published a guest essay in the New York Times accusing the producers of twisting the truth of her relationship with Kennedy to shape her into an easy villain.

“The character ‘Daryl Hannah’ portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John. The actions and behaviours attributed to me are untrue,” she wrote, refuting depictions of her using cocaine, planting stories in the press, intruding on a memorial service and comparing Jacqueline Onassis’s death to that of a dog, among other things. 

Hannah’s argument the depictions are false pushes the case from the ethical realm into the legal one, said James Nadler, a screenwriting professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and former lawyer. A person can sue for defamation if something untrue was published about them and it damages their reputation.

In her essay, Hannah wrote that she’s received “hostile and even threatening messages” from people who believed the show’s portrayal of her was factual, and she worries the misconception will affect her ability to continue working in environmental advocacy and animal-assisted therapy for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

Producer Nina Jacobson told GoldDerby that for the purposes of the show, Hannah, as Kennedy’s ex-girlfriend, is “an adversary” standing in the way of the audience’s desired outcome, but that they still tried to treat her with grace.

A spokesperson for Disney Plus, which streams the program in Canada, did not respond to a request for comment.

Last month Netflix reportedly settled a lawsuit from Rachel DeLoache Williams, a former friend of con artist Anna Sorokin, who alleged she was cast as a villain in the satirical “Inventing Anna.” In her lawsuit, she claimed Sorokin was depicted in part as a more sympathetic anti-hero, while she was made to look self-serving and fickle. The streaming giant has faced other lawsuits over programming that dramatizes real-life stories. 

Whether Hannah will sue over “Love Story” remains to be seen, but Nadler said the producers have to have known it was a possibility — scripts of this nature get combed over by lawyers, who often suggest changing names and details about real people to avoid any costly legal battles.

The problem there, he said, is that “it’s much more difficult to make a composite character compelling.”

And while the couple at the centre of the series both died in a plane crash in 1999, members of the Kennedy family have objected to the series as well, including John F. Kennedy Jr.’s nephew Jack Schlossberg.

“I would just want people who do watch the show to watch it with one letter in mind, and that’s a capital F for fiction. The guy knows nothing about what he’s talking about, and he’s making a ton of money on a grotesque display of someone else’s life,” Schlossberg said on CBS Sunday Morning, referring to executive producer Ryan Murphy.

Elaine Chang, a professor of cultural studies at the University of Guelph, said producers should ask themselves what they hope to accomplish by creating something based on true events

“At the pre-production level, was there a clear shared vision, collaborative vision of the story they wanted to tell and why they were telling it and how they were going to tell it?” she asked. 

From there, she said, they can decide whether the project needs the buy-in of its subjects to accomplish their goals.

She pointed to Pamela Anderson, who has been outspoken about her disdain for the 2022 miniseries “Pam & Tommy,” which depicts the early days of her marriage to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, and the sex tape they made that was leaked without their consent.

Earlier this year, Anderson suggested she would like Seth Rogen, who executive produced and starred in the series, to apologize to her.

“How can someone make a TV series out of the difficult times in your life?” Anderson said to Andy Cohen on SiriusXM in January, after seeing Rogen at the Golden Globe Awards. “Like, I’m a living, breathing human being over here, hello!”

In that case, director Craig Gillespie told Dazed the story was about the destructive power of the internet. He said he felt the show offered “a strong commentary on how complicit we are in all of this, particularly through the lens of today.”

Chang said using that rationalization when Anderson didn’t want the show to be made was egregious. 

“It’s like being exploited twice in her case.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2026.