Elle Fanning, Chloe Sevigny talk 'The Girl From Plainville'

By Danielle Long & Jason Nathanson

The new Hulu true crime series "The Girl from Plainville" is inspired by the unprecedented texting suicide case in which Michelle Carter was found guilty.

As a teen, Carter sent texts to her then-boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, urging him to kill himself. Roy died by suicide in 2014, and Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2017.

In the recently released limited series, actress Chloë Sevigny plays Conrad's mother, Lynn Roy, and told ABC Audio that she was "surprised" how much the role affected her.

"I think [because] I'm a new mother, had a child in 2020 and the material, yeah, really hit in a way that was harder than I had anticipated," she explained.

Elle Fanning, who plays Michelle, also said the material was heavy and added that she felt a strong responsibility to tell the story "the right way," which doesn't necessarily mean you agree with everything.

"You don't have to like someone to play them, but you have to at least understand and come at it from a human perspective," she said. "And I do feel like I understand her."

One way that Fanning, 23, understands is when it comes to technology and social media.

"I could relate, in a sense, to growing up in social media," the actress shared. "Like this false intimacy that our phones can create and especially like a relationship that was literally all over text. You know, [Michelle and Conrad] met only a handful of times, and that just felt -- it's very modern."

Fanning said the series can be looked at as a cautionary tale to remind people "words matter."

"It's so easy to bully over a device. ... It's so easy to do that because you're not standing in front of someone and seeing how those words you're saying affect them, and you probably wouldn't say the same things if you were standing in front of them," she said.