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Filmmaker Ry Russo-Young has embraced the adage that artists must tell a story only they can tell.
(Cade had a different donor.)
Then he brought on a major court case in the hopes of securing parental rights to Ry.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I started shooting around when I was 14, with a Hi8 camera.
Did I know I was shooting this?
But I started trying to tackle this topic, I would say earnestly, in college.
I needed to have confidence in my ability to do it justice.
Working in fiction so long really drove into me Joseph Campbell Heros Journey the narrative arc payoffs.
I think I was able to bring a lot of that narrative construction to this story.
I was more uncomfortable being the subject.
And your parents remain angry with Tom.
My early 20s is when I started to wrestle with my feelings toward him in a more active way.
But I hated him in the trial, and I hated him even when I was 16.
I had a lot of venom, but it was starting to get more complicated.
So I wanted the viewer, and the experience of watching the series, to mimic that arc.
Do you agree with that?Yes, absolutely.
Were there things you decided not to include?Oh yeah.
I wanted it to be a tightly braided narrative.
Can you tell me about some of them?So Tom had a high-school girlfriend.
He got her pregnant.
They were both from Catholic families.
She had the baby, and they put her up for adoption.
The daughter had found me in my early 30s, and I went and I interviewed her.
She had been looking for Tom her entire life, trying to figure out her birth parents.
She had a very hard life growing up.
She found him a year before he died, just after the lawsuit.
And then he died.
She was always sort of angry that she didnt get to spend more time with him.
We have a lot of physical similarities.
Shes almost the inverse of me.
Were two sides of the same coin in some way.
And she didnt make it in either, which was a bummer.
I heard from his daughter.
But I havent heard from the Steel family directly.
They might be waiting, but I think they also need some time to process it.
This isnt in the film, but he was the star of their family.
He was the second oldest.
In certain families, theres a golden child, and he was that child.
Were the Steels not aware of you?My moms said that they werent up at the time.
Was he out to his family?Yes.
Im not exactly sure when he came out to his family, but they knew he was gay.
They knew his partner Milton, and he was part of their lives.
Its also suggested in the documentary that he was a major influence on Tom and the lawsuit.
Did you make a run at reach out to him earlier in your lives?No.
I mean, I wasnt ready emotionally.
I wish I had been.
I did give a shot to reach out to Milton, Alzheimers and all.
And what came back was he wasnt able to because of the Alzheimers.
You also cast actors to reenact certain scenes from your childhood.
That must have been one bizarre casting session.It was definitely something I was really afraid of.
We didnt do it until quite late in the game of making the series.
We dropped them in and shot-listedor outlined each sceneshot-for-shot.
That was certainly my narrative chops coming out.
It was a crazy thing, casting myself at 9 years old and my mothers and all of them.
And reliving those situations, or recreating them.
Other people have done that before.
Sarah Polley famously used the technique as a sleight-of-hand inStories We Tell, a film about her complicated parentage.
I wasnt worried about copying.
In the trial, there was so much emphasis on me.
But it was something that we were going through as a family.
And it affected everyone in the family in different ways and in similar ways.
It was also important because our whole lives, we were having to prove that we were sisters.
What happened to Cades donor?
But was he part of the trial?He died of AIDS around the same time that Tom died.
He remained, quote-unquote, agnostic.
And that was really hurtful to my sister.
And she felt betrayed by him.
Footage inNuclear Familyshows that not all audience members were welcoming.
Do you regret doing those interviews now?I dont.
But Im not big on regret overall.
I think my philosophy is that life choices either kill you or make you stronger.
And it wouldnt be in this series if I hadnt done it.
And it was something that I wanted to do, so I dont regret it.
Its crazy to look at now, but Im not sorry.
Your parents felt she took Toms side during the trial and they stopped speaking.
Whats their relationship like now?There isnt one.
So that was tough to navigate.
in your life?The only one thats really difficult is Tom, actually.
I think everyone else is very clear for me, or somewhat clear.
Tom Ive always wrestled with.
And for me, Im not really comfortable with any language.
Biological father actually feels closer to me because sperm donor feels too impersonal.
