Investigation Discovery (ID) wrapped up its three-part documentary series, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, on Wednesday (May 31) night. It told the unbelievable story of a couple adopting an adult they accused of pretending to be a six-year-old Ukrainian orphan.
Now, Grace is getting to open up in a two-hour follow-up documentary, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, where she will share her side of this unusual case, which is also set to be adapted into an eight-part Hulu scripted series starring Ellen Pompeo and Imogen Reid.
“This is my side of the story, and I’m going to say what happened because I never got a chance to say what happened,” Grace says in a trailer shared by ET Online.
Michael Barnett and Kristine Barnett, a now-divorced couple from Indiana, adopted Grace in 2010, thinking she was a six-year-old girl. The couple, who didn’t realize Grace had spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (a form of dwarfism), came to believe their newly adopted daughter was not actually a child.
The Barnetts claimed Grace tried to harm them and their children, including accusations that she tried to poison Kristine, pushed Michael into an electric fence, and brandished a knife toward Michael while he was in bed.
“The things that Kristine and Michael have said that I have done is a lie,” Grace states in the trailer for the upcoming doc. “I have never done anything that Kristine and Michael have said that I have done.”
Kristine and Michael eventually had Grace’s legal age changed from six to 22. Then, in 2013, the family moved to Canada, leaving Grace behind in an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana. The couple was later charged with abandonment, though Michael was found not guilty in 2022, while the charges against Kristine were dropped in March 2023.
As for Grace, she was adopted by another couple, Anton and Cynthia Mans, who became her legal guardians in 2016 and believe Grace to be a teenager.
“You can ask anybody in my family now. You can ask Bishop Antwon and Cynthia Mans that, just ask them, ‘Has she ever done anything?’ They will tell you who I really am. They’re not going to lie, and neither am I,” Natalia says in the clip.
Grace goes on to say it’s “frustrating” to hear all the things Kristine and Michael have said about her. “I already don’t know who I am, and I want to know who I am and what happened to me, but I’m hearing all this stuff that never actually happened from Kristine and Michael,” she states.
“I’m like, ‘It’s shocking, and it’s frustrating.’ Because that’s not even true,” she continues. |And people are believing what Kristine and Michael are saying without even hearing my side. Y’all have heard from Kristine and Michael and what they have said. But you need to hear both sides in order to know what happened.”
