Actor Quinton Aaron, who portrayed former NFL player Michael Oher in the Academy Award-winning film The Blind Side, has defended fellow co-star Sandra Bullock amid the hate mob’s call for her to relinquish her Oscar over the recent explosive allegations against the Tuohy family.
Speaking with Fox News, Aaron said that Bullock has nothing to feel guilty for in her portrayal of Leigh Ann Tuohy in the hit film, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar, entering the coveted pantheon of Academy Award-winning actresses throughout history.
“There’s a lot of hate being spread around nowadays. And there’s you know, someone asked me, there’s people saying things that, ‘Oh maybe you should strip Sandra of her title…her Oscar.’ I’m like, ‘For what?’” Aaron said.
“There’s nothing that says she had anything to do with this. She was an actress who got hired to do a job, and she did it so well that she was rewarded for it. Why would you take that reward just because of what’s going on today, 14 years later?” he added.
Aaron noted that Sandra Bullock has been grieving over the loss of her longtime partner Bryan Randall after his battle with ALS.
File/Actress Sandra Bullock and Actor Quinton Aaron arrive at the 2010 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Graydon Carter held at Sunset Tower on March 7, 2010 in West Hollywood, California. (Ethan Miller/WireImage)
“I wish they would just leave her alone because, you know, she’s going through her own things right now, you know with the love she just lost. You know, she suffered a great loss,” Aaron said.
“I’m far too familiar with the tragedy of losing a loved one, and it’s no easy feat. … My thoughts and prayers go out to her as well,” Aaron continued. “And the last thing she needs is for the Internet trolls to be coming at her talking about something, ‘We should take her Oscar.’ Like just — go sit down. Go. Stay home, sit down, get a job. You know what I mean? Just stop, leave her alone.”
The attacks against Sandra Bullock hit online Monday after former NFL star Michael Oher accused the Tuohy family of profiting off his life story with the hit movie The Blind Side. Some of her critics called upon Bullock to return the Oscar.
Sandra Bullock should give her Oscar back. She knows she didn’t deserve that shit.
— Brandon Walker (@BFW) August 14, 2023
As The Blind Side documented, in the early 2000s, the Tuohy family took Oher into their home during his time at a private high school in Memphis, Tennessee, where he excelled in football. Oher came from a troubled home life and the Tuohys opted to support him as he finished high school. He eventually went on to Ole Miss and later joined the NFL. On Monday, Oher alleged in a bombshell lawsuit that the family essentially fooled him into a conservatorship to profit off his name. As Breitbart News reported:
Oher now says he didn’t benefit at all from the millions that the film earned. On top of that, he alleges that the entire Tuohy family raked in hundreds of thousands while he got nothing.
In addition, Oher claims he has since discovered that despite what the Tuohys have always said — and despite what is claimed in books and in the film — Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy never did adopt him into the family. Instead, they had him sign a conservatorship document when he was a teen that gave them the legal right to control his finances and any business deals in his name. And now he is suing to get what is his.
Sean Tuohy later said the family has been “devastated” by the claims and that his family never profited off his name.
“Michael was obviously living with us for a long time, and the NCAA didn’t like that,” Tuohy told the Daily Memphian. “They said the only way Michael could go to Ole Miss was if he was actually part of the family. I sat Michael down and told him, ‘If you’re planning to go to Ole Miss — or even considering Ole Miss — we think you have to be part of the family. This would do that, legally.’ We contacted lawyers who had told us that we couldn’t adopt over the age of 18. The only thing we could do was to have a conservatorship. We were so concerned it was on the up-and-up that we made sure the biological mother came to court.”
Legal representatives for the Tuohy family now claim Oher tried to blackmail them for $15 million prior to the lawsuit by threatening to go public with the story.
“Over the years, the Tuohys have given Mr. Oher an equal cut of every penny received from ‘The Blind Side,’” attorney Marty Singer told TMZ Sports.
File/Actor Quinton Aaron (L) and actress Sandra Bullock attend the 39th Annual People’s Choice Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on January 9, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for PCA)
“Even recently, when Mr. Oher started to threaten them about what he would do unless they paid him an eight-figure windfall, and, as part of that shakedown effort refused to cash the small profit checks from the Tuohys, they still deposited Mr. Oher’s equal share into a trust account they set up for his son,” he added.
Singer further charged that Oher had been dropped by other lawyers until he “found a willing enabler and filed this ludicrous lawsuit as a cynical attempt to drum up attention in the middle of his latest book tour.”
“The notion that a couple worth hundreds of millions of dollars would connive to withhold a few thousand dollars in profit participation payments from anyone — let alone from someone they loved as a son — defies belief,” Singer told TMZ.
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.