Sometime after the riveting Katie Couric daytime interview with Manti Te'o, we thought we were finally done with this whole fake dead girlfriend football scandal hoax of the century thing. We really wanted to be done with it—but then we heard admitted hoaxer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo perform the voice of Lennay Kekua for Dr. Phil, and had our minds blown. You can watch the clip and hear Tuiasosopo's insanely realistic female voice over at Deadspin.
Up till now, it seemed impossible that a man could have been behind the voice of Kekua—as Te'o told Couric after listening to some of her voicemails, “Well, it didn’t sound like a man. It sounded like a woman,” he said. “If he somehow made that voice, that’s incredible, that’s an incredible talent to do that. Especially every single day." Well, voice analysts completely agree with him: one called him "a true talent" who had abilities the analyst had never seen before. And all three experts told Dr. Phil that his voice matched those from the voicemails.
So much for the NY Post's scoop that one of Tuiasosopo's female cousins was in on the hoax as well. In the second part of the interview, Tuiasosopo also revealed that the hoax had "everything to do" with escaping real life, because he had been repeatedly molested by a family friend starting when he was 12.
If you want a lovely recap of this whole mess, Next Media Animation has you covered below:
