The real stories on which the characters in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” are based

Jessica Chastain won her first Oscar for her extraordinary performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, now available in Star+ in Latin America. The narrative arc of her character is a tour de force, in which she was accompanied, also widely celebrated by critics, Andrew Garfield. But the roller coaster of the lives that the actors represented is not fiction: the story of the film directed by Michael Showalter is based on real events.

It is about the rise and fall of The PTL Club, an evangelist empire that began with a television program in 1974 in charge of the marriage of Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker and broke up in 1987, when it became known that the pastor had used congregational funds, theoretically intended to build a headquarters and religious theme park, to silence a young woman who had accused him of rape, among other financial irregularities.

Other indications had previously indicated that Bakker had used the collective funds for his personal life and had been investigated by the United States federal tax authority and recommended that the tax exemption benefit of religious foundations should be removed from him. A series of news reports revealed the frauds of Bakker, who was prosecuted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, reduced to eight in an appeal. Tammy Faye and her children had to leave their home and return their property.

These are the true stories behind the main characters of The Eyes of Tammy Faye:

Tammy Faye

Tamara Faye LaValley was born in 1942 to the home of Pentecostal preachers Rachel Fairchild and Carl LaValley, who divorced that same year. Because of the prejudices about marriage that weighed on the community, Rachel was away for a while, and that discrimination was projected on Tammy when her mother formed another family with Fred Grove, in which she was the oldest and the reminder of those painful events.

Tammy was very religious since she was a child and was studying Bible studies in Minneapolis, funded by her work in a boutique, when she met Jim, in 1960. A year later they married and started a rolling ministry, based in South Carolina. He preached and she sang. They created a children's television show, Jim and Tammy, but succeeded with another, with preacher puppets, which aired between 1964 and 1973 on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).

In 1967 Tammy had her first daughter, Tammy Sue Bakker, and five years later Jamie Charles Bakker was born.

In 1974 the Bakkers took the big economic leap with the founding of The PTL Club, which became a chain in itself, as well as a foundation that built, four years later, Heritage USA, a Christian theme park. The PTL Club generated annual revenues of about $120 million per year (seventies values, tax exempt) and also caused stinging among the most conservative evangelists when, in the 1980s, during the AIDS crisis, Tammy interviewed Christian pastor Steven Pieters about homosexuality and the HIV, emphasizing the compassion that people should have as sisters.

After several marital crises, and although Tammy stayed by Jim's side during the allegations of embezzlement, they ended their ministry, the Bakkers separated. Years later Tammy married real estate developer Roe Messner, who had built Heritage USA.

In 1996 she published her autobiography Tammy: Telling It My Way, and in 2003 a second part, I Will Survive... and You Will, Too! , in which he told about his fight against colon cancer. He made minor appearances on television, co-starred in a reality show and became a supporter of the LGBTQ community with his presence at the pride marches. Prior to this film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye was the title of a documentary narrated by RuPaul. Tammy's deteriorating health received extensive media coverage, until her death in 2007.

Jim Bakker

He was also born to an evangelist family in Muskegon, Michigan. He met Tammy while studying at North Central University.

Between the CBN program and the founding of The PTL Club, Bakker participated in the creation of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), but a few months later he separated from the group. The house where he lived with his wife facing Lake Wylie in one of the most exclusive areas of Tega Cay, South Carolina, was nearly 1,000 square meters on five floors, with whirlpool set in a rock garden, long-necked swan-shaped faucets, gym, kitchen commercial and at least 25 closets.

Jessica Hahn, an employee of the ministry, said that Bakker and former PTL Club co-host John Wesley Fletcher had drugged and raped her. To silence her, Bakker paid her USD 279,000, and to hide this and other irregularities, it is believed that she had double counting. When the scandal began, Fletcher and Jay Babcock, director of The PTL Club, denounced Bakker for unwanted sexual advances.

He served five years of his sentence and was paroled in 1994. Nine years later he returned to televangelism with The Jim Bakker Show, changing his doctrine from prosperity to apocalypse. He married another television preacher for the second time, Lori Graham, with whom he adopted five children. It continues to be poorly regarded among Christian communities.

During the pandemic, he sold colloidal silver supplements against the coronavirus, which earned him warnings from the New York Prosecutor's Office, the FDA and the FTC for misinformation about COVID-19. At that time he said that if Donald Trump was removed from office, the religious would start a new Civil War, which earned him numerous criticisms.

Jerry Falwell (played by Vincent D'Onofrio)

The fervent Baptist (who was also a conservative activist, influenced by the election campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George W.H. Bush) got Bakker's pastor status removed from Bakker by the Assemblies of God, a group of evangelist ministries.

Bakker had named him his successor before he resigned from The PTL Club, because he hoped to negotiate with him for his return when the scandal passed; however, Falwell, who had never tolerated the success of Tammy and Jim well, expelled Bakker from his own church and declared him “probably the biggest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of history”.

Tammy publicly stated that she forgave him and that she hoped “that the Falwell family would never have to live the pain and suffering that Jerry imposed on the Bakkers.”

The founder of Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty University in 1971 and the political group Moral Majority failed to repair the economic damage to PTL, which was bankrupt, and resigned in 1987. He would die 20 years later, and his “pro-life, pro-family, pro-moral and pro-American” legacy, as he defined, was mixed with the mockery of his belief that Tinky Winky, the purple teletubbie, was “a gay model” and with the condemnation that his saying about AIDS received: “It is not only the divine punishment of homosexuals, it is also the divine punishment of society that tolerates homosexuals”.

Pat Robertson (played by Gabriel Olds)

At 92, he remains among the most powerful in the media as president of CBN. He is also CEO of Regent University and founder of the Christian Coalition. His political ambitions led him to run as a pre-candidate of the Republican Party for the 1988 presidential election, but he soon withdrew due to a shortage of votes in the primaries.

He often makes predictions, such as that the world would end in 1982 or that in 2007 there would be more terrorist attacks in the United States. His statements — both in his program, from which he recently retired, and in his books — cause controversy: he has expressed controversial ideas about Jews, Islamists, Hindus, homosexuals, feminists, university professors, Barack Obama and the people of Haiti. His business in televangelism is global, with great importance in Asia, Africa and some European countries.

Rachel Fairchild (played by Cherry Jones)

Rachel is Tammy's mother, who despite being discriminated against because of her divorce continued her entire life as a deeply religious woman. His relationship with Tammy was always difficult. He had six other children.

Despite his criticism of the prosperity creed professed by his daughter and son-in-law, he agreed to move with them to the lavish lakefront house. He also agreed that one property part of the Heritage USA complex should be put in his name (another was put in the name of Furnia Bakker, Jim's mother), and there he died, in Fort Mill, South Carolina, in 1992.

Roe Messner (played by Sam Jaeger)

The founder of Messner Construction, from Kansas, was married when he met Tammy Faye, during the construction of Heritage USA. In 1993 he divorced to marry her. They settled in Rancho Mirage, California.

During the PTL Club scandal, he testified in the Bakker trial, denouncing Jerry Falwell's maneuvers. Messner said that, against what Falwell argued to portray the Bakkers as greedy hypocrites, Tammy had not written a list of economic demands to discreetly disappear: “I won't ask PTL for anything. I don't ask for anything” said the paper he delivered, according to him. In the trial, Messner remained the main creditor of PTL and was accused of inflating the debt figure.

In 1996, the man who presents himself - according to his website - as “the No. 1 church builder in the United States” was sentenced to 27 months in prison for fraud in bankruptcy, and was released in 1999.

On the death of Tammy, the builder of more than 1,700 temples, including some megachurches, buried his ashes in Waldron, where he was born, next to those of his mother.

Gary Paxton (played by Mark Wystrach)

He was a music producer who won the Grammy Award. “Gary's impact on the Bakkers' lives was quite important. The most important thing for her, really, was music. She did her ministry through music, and her relationship with Paxton recording had a big impact on her life,” Wystrach, also a musician, said of her role.

The son of a teenage girl, he was given up for adoption and at the age of three he received his name. He had his first band as a teenager. He was also a composer, sound engineer and record label owner. In 1970 he moved from rock to country and moved to Nashville. There he converted to Christianity. He died at the age of 73.

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