The actor revealed how his father once created a Facebook profile posing as a pretty girl to catch him, and now he’s turned the disturbing experience into an award-winning movie.
James Morosini, 31, was going through a particularly difficult period with his father, Claudio Lichtenthal, about a decade ago when he decided to cut him out of his life.
But Lichtenthal did not want to give up contact with his son and created a fake Facebook account to contact him, using photos of a beautiful girl to get his attention.
As Morosini developed a romantic interest in the girl, he discovered that it was actually his father who was behind the account, which made him feel “utterly furious and embarrassed”.
Surprisingly, the couple have since managed to mend their relationship, and now Morosini, who previously had roles in American Horror Story: Roanoke and HBO Max’s Coed Sex Lives, is making his film debut based on the I Love Mine experience. Dad” at the SXSW Film Festival.
James Morosini, 31, has revealed how his father once created a Facebook profile posing as a pretty girl to catch him, and now he’s made a movie about it.
About ten years ago, he was going through a particularly difficult time with his father, Claudio Lichtenthal, when he decided to cut him out of his life.
In real life, Morosini was 20 years old and was battling depression as his strained relationship with his father reached breaking point. After one unsuccessful argument, Morosini decided to eliminate him entirely.
“My dad and I had a big fight and I decided to just cut him off social media and everything,” he told Deadline.
In addition to blocking him on social media, he changed his number’s contact details to “Do Not Answer.”
But his father, in a worried but misguided attempt to test his son, came up with a way to get around Morosini’s restrictions.
“One day I came home. And this really beautiful girl sent me a friend request on Facebook. And she looked amazing. She had the same interests as me and liked all the same things,” Morosini told Screen Anarchy.
He and “Becca” started talking, and he became more interested in her and worried – until he noticed that her email address was the same as his father’s.
“Basically, he created this whole profile to make sure I was okay,” Morosini said.
Morosini was angry and embarrassed. By that time, he and his father had also started talking again in real life and were working on their relationship in family therapy – this is where Morosini ran into him, taking out a printout of “Becky’s” Facebook profile during a session.
He staged it in I Love My Dad, in which he plays the son and Patton Oswalt plays the father.
I Love My Dad, which also stars Rachel Dratch and Claudia Sulewski, won the Grand Jury Prize for Storytelling at SXSW.
As upset as he was, Morosini admitted that even at the time he knew the experience was an interesting story.
“When I first discovered that it was my father, it was like a pretty crazy emotion,” he said.
“Because it was full of rage and embarrassment, but I’ve always been into comedy and I’ve always had a pretty keen sense of irony, so I had this very small part of me when I discovered it, I secretly thought, ‘Cool, this is so good. . There is something here. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t believe he did it.”
“I think it’s a fucking crazy story,” he added to the Daily Beast.
“One of the main reasons I wrote this is because I was able to realize that it was weird. It’s a cool mix of something really weird, but also beautiful in a quirky way.”
But, he admitted, “it was the most uncomfortable thing I could write about.”
The film is based on his real life experience, although he says he only used the “core” of the real story and used his imagination.
“We explored the idea of how far this could go,” he said.
In the film, Morosini’s character Franklin ends up in rehab for depression when he cuts contact with his father, Chuck, played by Patton Oswalt.
He stopped talking to his father (pictured), who posed as a pretty girl named Becca, and added him as a friend on Facebook. In the end, Morosini understood the truth
The film explores “how far it could have gone” when a son character has sex with a catfish profile before realizing it is his father.
Chuck, wanting to mend their relationship, gets the idea of catching catfish from a friend who did it to rekindle a romance with an ex.
After meeting a diner waitress named Becca, played by Claudia Sulewski, he tracks her down on Facebook and uses her photos to create another account before a friend asks for his son.
Relationships become tense in the film, escalating from pleasant conversation to sexting and full cyber sex before Franklin learns the truth.
Although Morosini said he and his father now have a good relationship – and he wanted to make sure the father character was likable in the film – he makes it clear in the film that what his father did was bad.
But, according to him, it was this that ultimately helped restore their relationship.
“It was like we hit rock bottom in our relationship, but it got us to face some fundamental issues in our relationship and actually caused things between him and me to get a lot better over time because we had to talk. about it,’ he said.
“It’s funny that this moment in my life with him may have been the saving grace of our relationship as it caused everything to really fall apart.
“There was no more pretense. We were both able to agree, like, this is very fucked up. And now we have to talk about it. We can’t pretend that everything is fine between us,” he said.
I Love My Dad, which also stars Rachel Dratch, won the Grand Jury Prize for Storytelling at SXSW.