The Real Person Susie From The Girl From Plainville Is Likely Based On

Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville is a dramatization of the tragic 2014 texting suicide case, which led to Conrad Roy’s suicide and Michelle Carter's conviction for involuntary manslaughter. The show mostly follows the real facts from the case, but it takes some liberties with the characters. This includes Susie Pierce (played by Pearl Amanda Dickson), who meets Carter (Elle Fanning) at a softball tournament. Like Carter, Susie is an outsider at her school, and the two bond on a deep level before suddenly drifting apart.

Susie isn’t a real person, but she’s most likely based on Alice Felzmann. According to a 2017 Esquire investigation, Felzmann was from Bellingham, Massachusetts and met Carter in summer 2012, while they were both playing on a traveling softball team. (Carter had already met Roy in February 2012 during a Florida vacation.) The two soon became inseparable; while on a team trip to Montreal, they broke off from the group and had dinner together. Felzmann said she thought Carter was “funny and kind.”

Felzmann’s mother, Kelly, said that when the two girls met, Alice was depressed. "I personally think Michelle picked up on that," Kelly said, adding that she disliked Carter. “Super nice. No kid is that nice."

The girls’ towns were only about 20 minutes apart, so Carter and Felzmann often had sleepovers, where they’d go swimming and sneak out to play basketball. When they weren’t together, they texted constantly. Felzmann’s parents thought Carter was a bad influence, and they confiscated her phone. But then Felzmann would just switch to talking to Carter on Facebook. Her mother became frustrated with the way Carter had “latched on” to Felzmann, and told her daughter to cut ties, which she eventually did with no warning.

Carter later texted Roy, “This whole Alice situation is making me depressed.” Roy told her to not let it get to her. But Esquire journalist Jesse Barron noted that there seemed to be more to the story, and wondered if Carter actually had romantic feelings for Felzmann. When Carter and Felzmann were still hanging out, an unmarked envelope arrived for Felzmann at her house. Felzmann’s mother Kelly opened it, and inside were three handwritten pages that sounded like a love letter, which she believed Carter wrote. (Kelly hid the letter from her daughter; another source confirmed its existence, but Kelly declined to show it to Esquire.)

There were also texts in which Carter spoke about her friendship to Felzmann in romantic terms. She even claimed Felzmann was her first kiss. Then, a week before Roy’s death, Carter texted a classmate, “Do you remember me being best friends with a girl named Alice?" She texted another friend a similar message: "I'm obsessed with her like idk how to stop. Every love song or whatever, it's her I think about." To a third friend, she said she was “going through a grieving process” and needed “to get closure."

Kelly told Esquire that Carter had made that all up, and that the girls’ relationship was “never physical.” When asked if she had any “strong emotions” watching her former best friend’s trial, Felzmann simply said, “No.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You can also reach out to the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 or the Trevor Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386, or to your local suicide crisis center.