Is The Help based on a true story? Released in theaters in the fall of 2011, The Help was adapted to the screen based on the best-selling novel of the same name written by Kathryn Stockett. Following the success of the book's release in 2009, The Help was quickly turned around with Tate Taylor directing an ensemble cast that includes Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Jessica Chastain.

The main plot of The Help focuses on a trio of main characters in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. Davis and Spencer play Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, two black maids working for white families, while Stone plays Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a young aspiring writer. After Skeeter returns to her hometown of Jackson, she becomes interested in telling the stories of "the help" to show other white people what their experience is like. The Help was a big success, earning over $200 million worldwide and was nominated for four Oscars, with Spencer winning for Best Supporting Actress.

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Now that The Help is available on Netflix, the film has become one of the top titles on the streaming service amid the Black Lives Matter protests, and many might wonder if the story depicted is based on real life. Whether The Help's story is fact or fiction isn't a straightforward answer, though. As with Stockett's novel, the overall story is a fictional one. The Help is not inspired by a true story of a writer in the 1960s who publishes a book holding multiple life stories of black maids. Although this narrative is fictitious, one character in the book - and, as a result, the movie - was inspired by an actual person.

Emma Stone and Viola Davis in The Help

Stockett claims that The Help is a fictional story, but she was sued in 2011 - several months before the film's release - by a black maid named Ablene Cooper based on claims that her life was the inspiration behind Aibileen Clark's story. Ablene was a maid for Stockett's brother and babysat her daughter once. She sued Stockett for the unauthorized appropriation of her name and image. Besides sharing a similar first name, the life story of Aibileen mirrors Ablene's life as her son died shortly before the Stockett's first child was born. Speaking to the Daily Mail at the time of the lawsuit, Cooper said:

"Kathryn spelt my name wrong, but they pronounce it exactly the same way in the book and the film. I introduced myself to Kathryn when I first met her at her brother’s house that way: ‘'Aib-e-leen'. Kathryn has Aibileen teaching the white folks’ baby girl to call her 'Aib-ee'. That’s what I taught Kathryn’s niece and nephew to call me because they couldn’t manage Abilene."

A bigger issue for Cooper, however, was the fact that The Help's Aibileen suffers from a tragic loss that was seemingly lifted from Cooper's own life:

"I just cried and cried after I read the first few pages. In the book, Aibileen has taken her job five months after her son is killed in an accident. My son, Willie, had leukaemia and died when he was 18, in July 1998, three months before I went to work for the Stocketts. I felt the emotions in my heart all over again. Kathryn copied parts of my life and used them without even asking me."

Despite the claims of similarities between Ablene Cooper's life and the story of Aibileen Clark, Ablene's attempt to sue Stockett was unsuccessful. She sued Stockett for $75,000, but the case was dismissed in late 2011 based on a one-year statute of limitations. This was the result of Ablene having possession of The Help book for more than a year before the lawsuit against Stockett was filed. So far, there is no legal proof that Aibileen's story in The Help was based on real life, but the similarities are difficult to ignore, even if the overall story of the book and movie are works of fiction.

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