I was discussing this with someone recently, and thought it would be interesting to bring it here.
When it comes to writing about real people, the general rule is that if they're alive, you should avoid writing about them negatively, unless you can prove it's true. If they're deceased, the dead cannot sue for libel, and neither can their descendants, but they can, if they really want to, claim reputational damage by association.
But how do you reconcile this with the fact that there is a whole genre of fictional biography, some reality based and some that takes significant liberties?
The unrealistic, of course, includes things like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (outlandish), and a couple of books about Hemingway being involved in espionage (not impossible, but unlikely, since he might have tried to hunt U-boats and spoken to Soviet agents, but is not known to have done anything impactful).
More than that, some fictional books are well known to be inspired by real people. For instance, Blonde does name Marilyn Monroe as the protagonist, but there are a lot of negative things that happen in the book/film that are not known to have happened in real life. Additionally, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is well-known to be inspired by Elizabeth Taylor, and Daisy Jones and the Six is known to be inspired by Fleetwood Mac, some of whose members are still alive. With regard to the latter two books, there is the standard disclaimer in the beginning "this is a work of fiction," but Taylor Jenkins Reid actually named the celebrities who served as inspiration in interviews.
There is no way someone, somewhere didn't take offense at something written in one of the aforementioned books. I mean, the real-life Fleetwood Mac drama alone might lead to the band members questioning if they were fairly portrayed.
Afaik, there's only been one case where the fiction author got sued was when Charles Higham portrayed Errol Flynn as a Nazi collaborator. And Flynn's descendants lost.
But whenever you try to read about this issue anywhere online, it's always "don't do it, you don't want to piss off the wrong people." But if that is true, how do Taylor Jenkins Reid and Joyce Carol Oates sleep at night?
by Professional-Owl363