‘The Curious Case of Natalia Grace’ Bosses Explain How “Bombshell” Phone Call Led to an Unexpected Season 3
Almost exactly one year ago, the ID channel aired what were expected to be the final episodes of the saga of Ukrainian-born American adoptee Natalia Grace. But just as Hot Snakes Media cofounders and producers Eric and Shannon Evangelista turned in the edit for the season two finale of The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, they received a phone call from Natalia’s new adoptive family, Bishop Antwon and Cynthia Mans. The preacher on the other end frustratingly telling them, “We got a situation. Something ain’t right with Natalia.”
“It was Christmas Eve, and it was, for us, this bombshell phone call,” Shannon now tells The Hollywood Reporter. “From then, we just said we had to pick up our cameras and follow it. That’s what we did.”
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The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter, airing on Jan. 6 and 7, picks up with that phone call, which led the Evangelistas to Tennessee where Natalia was living with the Mans family after years of being exploited by her former adoptive parents, Kristine and Michael Barnett. The Barnetts’ claim that Natalia, who has a rare form of dwarfism known as spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, was a manipulatively dangerous adult woman pretending to be a minor, was the focus of the first two seasons of The Curious Case. The second season confirmed Natalia was indeed a child when she lived with the couple from 2010 until 2013, when they abandoned her in an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, and as of 2023 was biologically 22 years old.
Yet life as an adult with the Mans family appears to have been equally as challenging, and perhaps just as predatory, as is explored in the new four-part docuseries that alleges Natalia was subjected to physical and financial abuse while in their care. Though Natalia never outright confirms or denies either claim, she does escape from their home with the help of Nicole and Vince DePaul, a couple with dwarfism who first expressed a desire to adopt her in 2009, as well as her London-based boyfriend Neil, whose relationship with Natalia was one of many sources of contention in the Mans’ home, the documentary shows.
“There were zero hesitations in continuing this story,” ID president Jason Sarlanis tells THR. “We had become so invested as a network in Natalia’s story, knowing that there were more twists and turns, we needed to see how it was going to [end]. That’s why we greenlit it.”
Below, Sarlanis and the Evangelistas talk with THR about piecing together The Final Chapter, how Natalia is doing today and what’s in store for the upcoming spinoff series The Curious Case of…, starring legal analyst Beth Karas, which premieres on Jan. 13.
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Eric, in the intro to this final series, you say that you’d thought Natalia had her happy ending. Did you have any suspicions about the Mans family or any other parts of this story while working on season two?
ERIC EVANGELISTA No, we thought it was over, but you always have to keep an open mind. You never know when a story is going to end.
SHANNON EVANGELISTA To me, there was no indication that this wasn’t a completely happy ending for Natalia. We were actually shocked when the phone call came in learning that there is a lot more to this story. We thought she was finally getting this happy ending and instead it took a complete turn and became this murky uncertainty.
When you arrived in Tennessee after that startling phone call and both the Mans family and Natalia told you everything was suddenly fine, did you ask to speak to Natalia alone?
SHANNON Yes, Eric did.
ERIC Yeah, we weren’t really allowed to do that. The Manses were very protective over us being allowed to speak to her alone at that point.
Were you ever able to see the Facebook text messages between Natalia and Neil that the Manses disapproved of?
SHANNON No. Natalia was pretty clear that her communications with Neil were private, but we had our own communications with Neil, and we also were able to see Nicole DePaul’s communications with Neil.
It’s stated in the doc that Neil wanted his identity hidden, why was he unwilling to be featured in the series?
SHANNON I think the way he saw it is his private relationship with Natalia wasn’t really relevant. It really came down to Natalia and that phone call [to the DePauls] and things just kind of very abruptly changing. And in this season, you’re going to get such a deep dive into Natalia and the DePauls with access that wasn’t previously given to us.
The DePauls helping Natalia escape from church at the beginning of Part Two is a major turning point in her story. How much of a heads up did you have that that was happening? What were you thinking going into that rescue mission?
SHANNON We literally had no lead time at all.
ERIC Maybe 24 hours, if that.
SHANNON It was explosive.
JASON SARLANIS I never thought in my career that we’d be seeing that kind of footage of an active escape being shot. It’s such a credit to our filmmakers and the amount of openness they had to follow the story wherever it would lead.
Part One begins to cast doubt on the intentions of the Manses in adopting Natalia. It’s stated at the end of the episode that they chose not to respond to the allegations of abuse put forth about them later in the series. When did communication with them end?
SHANNON It never really fully ended, honestly. We were communicating with them and were very forthright about every allegation that was ever made. They were given detailed information. They just ultimately chose not to respond to those allegations. Communication continued throughout the whole shooting of the documentary.
Law enforcement also opted not to speak on those allegations. Does that seem to suggest there’s an ongoing investigation? [THR received the following statement from Sergeant Shawn Verma of the Lafayette, Indiana, Police Department: “We do not have any active cases with Antwon and Cynthia Mans regarding abuse. There was a case in 2020 which was transferred to Crawfordsville PD that involved [the] Antwon and Cynthia Mans residence.”]
SHANNON Whenever minors are involved, police departments really don’t want to comment. They want to maintain the privacy of any individuals. But when the allegations came in against the Manses, we immediately notified law enforcement.
Robert Madewell is one of the individuals who was willing to go on the record about the Manses’ alleged abuse of his son. Anna Newlin, however, appears to change her story in the documentary from the initial recorded phone call you had with her in which she also accused the Manses of abusing Natalia. Why do you think that is?
SHANNON Here’s our thing, as documentarians, our job and what we want to do is to go out and produce unbiased, safe spaces where people can share their side of the story and then we corroborate it. Why individuals act the way they do, we really leave that to the experts, like Beth Karas.
Beth Karas describes Natalia’s living situations thus far as a “hell loop.” How is it that she’s found herself in the care of such questionable individuals repeatedly? Does it simply come down to the vulnerabilities disabled people face in society?
SHANNON I absolutely think so. I think that Natalia is a survivor. I think she is incredibly strong. I think that right now, we’re able to verify that she is safe and she is well taken care of and that feels great. She’s a very strong, intelligent young woman. She’s very, very capable and she’s overcome so much in her life. We all have a lot of respect for her resilience.
Do we know where things stand with Natalia financially? There is a big question in the doc about her possibly being blackmailed by the Manses and also being stuck with a hefty tax bill as a result of their mismanagement of her disability benefits and other income. Do you know how much money she’s brought in from appearances or how much money they’ve made from her being in their care?
SHANNON No, I don’t. They have a lot of stuff that was going on with GoFundMes and stuff that we weren’t really privy to other than what Natalia had told us, so there’s no real way for us to corroborate that, just because we don’t have access to exactly what’s going on on their side of things.
In the doc, you state that mental health services were made available to Natalia which she chose to decline. How did she respond to your offer?
SHANNON She said she wasn’t interested in it, but it’s also something that was part of a much deeper ongoing discussion between Natalia and the DePauls. They have been her number one advocates. I don’t think there’s anyone that fully understands Natalia’s situation better than Nicole, who has the same exact rare form of dwarfism. So, one of the things that Nicole feels very positive about is Natalia is starting to open up to different surgery options for herself. She feels like if Natalia can change her stance on that, she can change her stance on anything else. We always take the health and safety of any individuals involved in any of our productions extremely serious, so we offered those services to Natalia. At the time she declined, but that doesn’t mean she won’t change her mind in the future.
In Part Four, Natalia goes to the U.K. to meet Neil for the first time. Did you attempt to follow her on that trip?
SHANNON No, that’s her doing her thing. There’s no reason for it. We were very excited for Natalia, especially because Natalia finally has had her age corrected and is able to be the 21-year-old girl that she always wanted to be celebrating her 21st birthday. One thing that’s amazing about this series is you see someone who finally, for the first time in their life, gets to make their own choices. Embracing Natalia’s agency, I think, is part of the narrative of this final chapter and it’s something we’re really proud of for her and excited for her in the future.
The ongoing disputes between Natalia and the Manses took a toll on the DePaul’s marriage and also their relationship with their biological daughter. Do you have a sense of how they’re doing now as a family unit?
SHANNON I don’t know what I’m allowed to say. All I can say is I’m a sucker for a happy ending — a real one, not a fake one.
Even though this iteration of the series is labeled “The Final Chapter,” is there a world where this story could continue?
SARLANIS All I’ll say is I haven’t gotten a phone call, so I can promise you, thus far, it’s not like last time. But I think that’s part of why we’re so excited about evolving this with a spinoff series with Beth Karas. Whether or not Natalia’s story is ever revisited, a lot of that will have to do with Natalia, but there’s so many other stories. I was shocked at what came back when we initially started to develop what a spinoff could be. Natalia’s nowhere near the twistiest, turniest story that Eric and Sharon have found, and I’m a little bit upset about that.
SHANNON We’re talking a conman with multiple identities, a religious doomsday cat cult. Every story is crazier than the next. We have a lot of appreciation for our audience, so we don’t want it to end for them. We’re really grateful to ID for giving us and Beth Karas this platform to continue to tell these crazier, stranger-than-fiction stories. No one would let us do this other than Jason and these stories are awesome. They’re going to be even better.
SARLANIS It’s a great case study for how we’re evolving the brand at ID. Yes, we are the home of all things true crime, but at the end of the day, we’re an investigative documentary network. And each one of these episodes is its own standalone feature documentary, taking us into more and more fascinating investigations, some of them not having anything to do with true crime. So it’s really exciting to see how we can evolve the brand together.
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The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter airs Jan. 6 and 7 from 9-11 p.m. ET/PT and will stream on Max.
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