Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell’s Beef with Ben Stiller

Joyce Mitchell, aka Tillie, is the woman who helped make the “Escape at Dannemora” possible. She has recently denounced director Ben Stiller as a “s.o.b. liar” because she doesn’t like the way she is being portrayed in his Showtime series. Stiller, she said, is “just like the rest of the world. He doesn’t care about the truth. All he cares about is making millions off me. He’s an idiot.” Tillie, who spoke to a New York Post reporter, is apparently in deep denial about all the things she herself said to the authorities after she was arrested. She now claims that the two escaped prisoners, David Sweat and Richard Matt, made up stories about her, while she dismisses the opinions of other people who saw her interactions with the two inmates inside the Clinton Correctional Facility before the escape occurred.

Ben Stiller talked to Deadline and pointed out that the series is not a documentary. He understands why Tillie is upset but, after a year of research, he believes that the story the film tells is a lot closer to the truth than what Tillie is saying now.

It is noted that Patricia Arquette did not want to meet with Tillie because she feared Tillie would try to put a spin on her story. There are a lot of reports out there, however, with some rather lurid details that Tillie gave the authorities when she was apprehended back in 2015, like this video with CNN’s Randi Kaye and Anderson Cooper, where they are chuckling over Tillie’s credibility issues.

In any event, they sure did a great job with the casting of Patricia Arquette as Tillie, Paul Dano as David Sweat and Benicio Del Toro as Richard Matt. The series has already been nominated for a Golden Globe award, as has Patricia Arquette for Best Actress in a Limited Series. Its 7th and final part airs on December 30, 2018. All prior parts are available on Showtime Anytime or On Demand with your cable subscription.