Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s ‘UnPrisoned’ is a comedy-drama series that explores the effects that a turbulent childhood can have on a person. The protagonist of the story is Paige Alexander, a relationship expert and therapist who is forced to confront her childhood trauma when her father returns after spending seventeen years in prison. Over the course of eight episodes, we discover not only Paige’s complicated past but also her father’s. The show’s importance is elevated because it is based on the story of Tracy McMillan, who serves as the creator and writer of the show.
Who is Tracy McMillan?
Tracy McMillan is a writer, author of several novels, relationship expert, and TEDx speaker, among other things. Born and raised in Minneapolis, she revealed that her childhood was “really dramatic” as she moved from one foster home to another while her father went to prison multiple times, disrupting her childhood and giving her “lots of opportunity to interface with some of the darker aspects of human nature.” McMillan was born in 1964 to a 20-year-old sex worker who didn’t want a child at that point. Her father was “a pimp and a drug dealer.”
Given up when she was 3-months-old, McMillan lived in foster care till she was a year and a half. Following this, she started living with her father but went to foster care again when he was sent to prison. She moved around a lot until her father came back. She’d spent some time in the care of a Lutheran family with whom she got very close. She had to leave them on her father’s return. They started living with his girlfriend, with whom McMillan remained for the next ten years when her father went to prison again, this time for nineteen years.
Tracy McMillan is Thriving Today
Tracy McMillan lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her partner, whom she calls “the most amazing man” she’s ever met. She has one son, Joseph, from her second marriage. She enjoys a successful career that has brought her several accolades. McMillan is a relationship expert and uses her social media platforms to spread awareness and share insights about childhood issues and their impact on relationships. On TV, McMillan is known for her work on ‘Mad Men,’ ‘The United States of Tara,’ ‘Necessary Roughness’ and ‘Runaways,’ among others.
Since 2019, McMillan has hosted several seasons of a reality show, ‘Family or Fiancé.’ She created ‘UnPrisoned’ while imagining what her life would be like if her father came to live with her and her son after spending all these years in prison. While the story is very personal to her, she said that it is something that everyone can relate to, whether or not they or someone they know has been to prison.
McMillan credits her tumultuous childhood as the reason behind her “rather eventful adulthood.” She has been married three times. She got married for the first time at the age of nineteen, but things didn’t work out as expected. Next, she got married when she was 32 and pregnant with her son. She and her second husband broke up amicably. Her third husband, whom she married when she was 40, was a liar and a cheat. McMillan traced the root of all her relationship problems to her complicated relationship with her father.
Over the years, McMillan self-educated herself on psychology and relationships from a scientific point of view, getting to the root of her issues while also enlightening others in the process. She talks about it and more in her book, ‘I Love You, and I’m Leaving You Anyway: A Memoir,’ published in 2011. Her article, ‘Why You’re Not Married,’ is the most-viewed article on the Huffington Post. In 2012, McMillan’s second book, ‘Why You’re Not Married . . . Yet’ was published. In 2016, she wrote a fictionalized version of her story in a novel titled, ‘Multiple Listings, the premise of which is similar to ‘UnPrisoned’ but follows a different path.
Read More: Where is UnPrisoned Filmed?
