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A growing number of viewers have committed to watching the 50-episode TikTok story “Who Did I Marry?”, a saga in which Teesa, the series’ narrator, recounts her whirlwind relationship with Legion, a man the one she is convinced is a pathological liar. .
In it, Teesa says she describes a love so riddled with red flags that “you would have thought I was colorblind because I ignored all that.” She tells the story without frills and with the hope that her traumatizing story can help others trust her instincts and avoid a similar fate.
“If just one woman watches these videos and says, ‘You know what? Something doesn’t feel right to me. Let me look into this,’ then it was worth it,” Teesa said in a interlude video.
In the videos, Tessa tells her story to the camera as if she were on FaceTime with a friend, sometimes using heatless rollers and sometimes while driving. When Teesa met Legion in March 2020, she says, she fell hard for him and his desire to support her financially. He told her during their first phone conversation that he was a divorced former football player and regional manager who recently moved to Georgia from California, she said, and on their first date he talked about wanting to get married, start a family and own a home. . — goals that Teesa also dreamed of.
Within months, Legion moved into the house Teesa was renting so they could endure the Covid lockdown together, he said. After Teesa discovered she was pregnant, she said pressure, also fueled by religious expectations, was mounting to calm down.
They looked at several houses, Teesa continued, but never closed a deal after Legion refused to show proof that it had the money to back up its $700,000 cash offers. She recounted how Legion said she was transferring money from her overseas account to buy him an Audi Q8 and said the SUV would be delivered to her house, but it never arrived.
Throughout the series, Teesa quickly recognizes the mistakes she made by staying with her ex-husband even though he didn’t keep his word: “I’m not a stupid person,” she said in a video. “But I never realized the things you now have to investigate.” He also emphasizes that the pandemic made the progression of their relationship and the delays Legion said they were experiencing more believable.
She miscarried, which Teesa said she later saw as a blessing. She didn’t buy a house, she said. And Teesa said she bought a car, a Nissan Altima.
They married in January 2021, she said, but the lies did not stop.
When she filed for divorce, she allegedly learned that he never lived in California and had been divorced at least twice before marrying her. Through government records and conversations with members of his family, Teesa said he discovered that he lied profusely about his family: pretending to have two sisters and two half-brothers, lying about family members who died of Covid when they had died years earlier and pretending talking on the phone with family members for periods of half an hour or more.
Legion lied about his money and his job, Teesa said: He was a forklift operator, not a regional manager or vice president.
After the series ended last week, it became the talk of TikTok, compared to other stories told online that were later adapted, such as “Zola” and “Dirty John.” Viewers began suggesting the titles “Legion of Lies” or “Surviving Legion” for the eventual book or Netflix or Lifetime movie that would inspire the series.
Some have asked that “proof of funds” be stamped on merchandise. (The official t-shirts were announced Tuesday, but they say “I survived Legion” and “#WhoTFDidIMarry.”) Other commenters said Teesa’s dreams deserved to come true: to own a BMW X5, take the trip to London and Paris that he mentioned in the story, and find an honest and loving partner. (She Announced on Wednesday that he will travel to London and Paris, and will document his trip on TikTok).
“People always say, ‘People have very short attention spans now. … In fact, I think it takes more brainpower to scroll every 10 seconds and have to process a new face, a new topic, a new title, a new comments section,’” he said Coco Mocoe, 28-year-old podcast host and digital media trend predictor in Los Angeles. “People crave the ability to find creators where they put their phone, find the video, and can just put it aside while they listen and brush their teeth or wash the dishes.”
After Universal Music Group pulled its songs from the platform, TikTok’s desire grew for content that doesn’t rely on TikTok’s sounds and pop music, Mocoe added.
Fans have clung to Teesa for her kind and genuine demeanor despite what she experienced, said Alex Pearlman, 39. tiktok creator and comedian in Philadelphia.
“She also reminds you that he (Legion) is a person. And that is rare in a story,” she said. “Usually someone is a villain. And she says, ‘No, this is the man I married.'”
amber wallin, a 32-year-old comedian, host and podcaster from Los Angeles, made her own comedy video and earned millions of views for questioning her husband in reaction to the series. Wallin said Teesa’s honesty and her thorough reasoning for overlooking her red flags might have helped many viewers sympathize with her rather than judge her.
“We were all in a state of despair during the pandemic.,“Wallin said. “Who among us didn’t do something ridiculous when we all thought the world was ending?”
With her growing following, Teesa has become something of a case study for entertainment producers, said Meridith Rojas, 36, co-founder of the Free Electron branding studio in Los Angeles.
“People want to be on TikTok, so they’ll stop scrolling if you give them something to really sink their teeth into,” Rojas said. “That’s what this creator did.”