A new Lifetime movie is based on Morgan Metzer’s life. What she says it got right

This story discusses sexual violence and abuse. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (1-800-799-7233).

Lifetime’s “Gaslit By My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story” is inspired by real events.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2021, Morgan Metzer awoke to a nightmare: a masked man entered her bedroom, beat her, restrained her and sexually assaulted her.

The intruder, who used a device to disguise his voice, left Morgan Metzer tied up on her deck with a pillowcase over her head and fled the house.

Soon after the brutal attack, Morgan Metzer’s ex-husband, Rodney Metzer, arrived on the scene. He comforted Morgan and seemed devastated by what had happened to her.

But before long, the unimaginable truth would emerge: it was Rodney Metzer himself who had attacked her.

The Lifetime movie explores how Rodney Metzer gaslit his wife for years, leading her to question her own reality, and how this abuse culminated in a horrific attack.

“Gaslit By My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story” stars Jana Kramer as Morgan Metzer, and was also executive produced by Kramer.

Kramer has been open about her own experiences with domestic abuse, and has supported Lifetime’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign, as well as the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

The actor and country singer says she hopes sharing Morgan Metzer’s story will help others recognize the signs of gaslighting and abuse, and to realize they are not alone.

“I wanted to play this part was because I know that it’s so many other people’s stories as well,” Kramer tells TODAY.com. “I wanted to be able to tell this and shed some light on this topic. And Morgan’s very brave to allow us to be able use her story to help other people.”

Kramer’s former “One Tree Hill” co-star, Austin Nichols, stars as Rodney, and Kramer’s real-life daughter, Jolie Rae Caussin, makes her acting debut as Morgan’s daughter, Amelia.

Read on to learn more about the real events that inspired Lifetime’s “Gaslit By My Husband,” and what Morgan Metzer’s story reveals about the realities of gaslighting and abuse.

What true story that inspired ‘Gaslit By My Husband’?

Lifetime’s “Gaslit By My Husband” is based on the real story of Morgan Metzer, a Georgia woman whose ex-husband gaslit her over time and ended up brutally assaulting her.

In the early morning of Jan. 1, 2021, the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office responded to a 911 call from Rodney Metzer, who said he had driven to his ex-wife’s house and discovered her tied up on her deck after having been assaulted, according to an August 2021 release from the Office of the District Attorney for the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit in Canton, Georgia.

However, a subsequent investigation found that Rodney Metzer himself had broken into his ex-wife’s home and attacked her. According to the district attorney’s office, he hit Morgan Metzer with the butt of a gun, tried to strangle her, then zip-tied her hands and assaulted her.

He then left her on her deck with a pillowcase over her head and told her not to move until she heard his car horn honking. 

Investigators found “substantial” evidence to implicate Rodney Metzer in the assault, according to the district attorney’s office, including a handgun in his vehicle and zip ties in his home that matched the ones used in the assault. Authorities also obtained surveillance footage showing Rodney Metzer purchasing zip ties from Lowe’s Home Improvement. 

In addition, authorities say they found the following search terms in Rodney Metzer’s internet browsing history: “How long before you starve to death,” “how to change the sound of your voice” and “how long it takes to choke someone unconscious.”

Morgan and Rodney Metzer were recently divorced at the time of the attack. They had known each other since they were teenagers, and they had previously been married for a decade and shared then-9-year-old twins, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.

In the days leading up to the assault, authorities say Rodney Metzer faked a cancer diagnosis “in an attempt to gain sympathy from his ex-wife,” a plotline that is shown in the Lifetime movie.

Authorities say Rodney Metzer had also “created a convoluted plan that the investigators in this case and our office truly believe involved a plot to kill her and then himself,” and that “when he couldn’t go through with that plan, he instead devised a new plan to rescue her.”

Where is Rodney Metzer now?

On Aug. 4, 2021, Rodney Metzer pled guilty to 14 charges related to the attack on his ex-wife, including kidnapping, sexual battery and aggravated assault, District Attorney Shannon Wallace said in a release at the time.

He was sentenced to 70 years in prison, with the first 25 years to be served in confinement and the remaining 45 years on probation. 

Metzer, who was 36 at the time of his sentencing, is currently incarcerated in the Augusta State Medical Prison in Grovetown, Georgia, according to inmate records from the Georgia Department of Corrections.

What to know about the signs of gaslighting

Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse in which the abuser uses various techniques to make their victim “question their own feelings, instincts, and sanity,” according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s website.

The term originates from a 1938 British play called “Gas Light,” which was later adapted into multiple movies. In the play, a husband gradually dims the gas lights at home but tells his wife she is imagining the lower light levels, leading her to think she is losing her grip on reality. 

In “Gaslit By My Husband,” Rodney is shown repeatedly gaslighting Morgan, often subtly.

In one scene, Rodney accuses Morgan of forgetting to pick up their kids from school. 

“You said you could do it today,” he says. “Don’t you remember?” 

Morgan is confused, because she had never said she would pick up the kids.

This may seem like a minor incident on the surface but over time, when an abuser repeatedly questions a person’s truth or accuses them of being in the wrong, the person might start to question their own memory and judgment, too.

Metzer says she wants people to recognize how these “small, tiny red flags” can accumulate over time.

“I want them to know it’s not big stuff. It could be very minimal,” she tells TODAY.com. “It could add up … piece by piece.”

“Check yourself with every argument or every situation that arises,” she continues. “Generally go, ‘OK, was I at fault? Did I not do this?’ And then don’t let it chip away until it gets big.”

Kramer echoes this, saying gaslighting can be “very sneaky.”

“It kind of can come up and then it builds, and then by that point, you’re questioning every part of your reality,” she says. “You don’t even know what is true versus what’s real.”

In the movie, Rodney’s gaslighting of Morgan escalates to the point where he pushes her down a flight of stairs, but later makes her believe she was the one who pushed him. 

“I’m worried about you, Morgan,” he tells her after the incident. “You’ve been violent, erratic, unfaithful.”

In this scene, Morgan seems disturbed and confused by the actions she falsely believes she committed, and tells her husband, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Gaslit By My Husband” also shows how abusers often isolate their victims and manipulate them with threats.

“No one is going to believe you,” Rodney tells Morgan in one scene. “Everyone we know is friends with me, not you. And if you ever try to leave me, they’ll never let you keep the kids.”

Kramer notes that when an abuser gaslights someone into thinking she herself is the problem, she may hesitate to speak out because of guilt or shame.

“Manipulation is the biggest thing in gaslighting. They can manipulate you to think anything, and it’s going to turn into guilt,” she says. “So then typically you hide from your guilt. You don’t want to share your problems out loud. You are not going to go and tell somebody, ‘Oh, my husband and I did this.’ So then you keep it all inside, and you think you’re the bad person.”

One message Kramer wants people to take away is that if you feel trapped in an abusive relationship, you are not alone. 

“It feels very isolating when you’re in a gaslighting abusive relationship that you’re the only one, or you’re crazy or it’s your fault,” she says. “And I hope people find their voice after watching this to know that they’re not alone and that there is help out there.”

Metzer also encourages women to talk honestly with each other about what they are going through at home. 

“The biggest thing is women need to trust each other,” she says. “Stop trying to make it look like everything is absolutely perfect. You’ve got the perfect husband, you’ve got the perfect life. You’ve got the perfect kids. If you would speak to each other, your friends would see the signs first, and you could get out earlier.”

Kramer also notes that whether abuse is emotional or physical, it is all abuse, and it is not OK. 

“For me, I think verbal abuse is just as bad,” she says. “It’s how it makes you feel. It’s any type of abuse, verbal, mental, sexual, physical abuse. It’s all not OK. And I think we know how we should be treated, and that’s something that we should stand firm on.”

Metzer says sharing her story feels ‘empowering’

Metzer says watching her story play out on screen was “really surreal.”

“I watched it and I felt like it was somebody else’s story. And then every once in a while it would hit me like, ‘Oh, this is about you,’” she says. “Certain parts would make me a little sad. And then some parts I’d be like, ‘I can’t believe I actually went through this. How did I make it?’ And it just made me think women’s strength is beyond powerful.”

Metzer says it was particularly powerful to watch the scene when Rodney sexually assaults her character in the movie, because it made her understand that incident from her own life in a different way.

“I didn’t realize your husband could rape you, but he can,” Metzer says. “And watching this video, a ‘no’ is a ‘no,’ whether it’s your husband or it’s not. … My husband said, ‘You’re supposed to serve me.’ And I didn’t realize how much he actually raped me until I saw that scene, how much I was just, I guess, taken advantage of.”

Kramer, who has been candid about her own experiences with domestic violence, also opens up about what it was like filming the attack scene, saying it was “by far” the most difficult. 

“Just because that was my abuser was on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. He was choking, strangling, hitting. So it was an uncomfortable replay,” she says. “But what my therapist helped me realize was that I got to take the control back that day. So I got to choose the different ending.”

Kramer says the courtroom scene at the end of the movie, when Morgan faces her abuser, was “healing” for her. 

“I got to find my own healing that day and my own weight lifted,” she says. 

While watching her own story on screen was challenging at times, Metzer says it ultimately feels empowering to use her experiences to help others.

“If I don’t take the bad that came of this, that I feel that God wants me to do, it’s like, why did it happen,” Metzer says. “It would happen for no reason. I’ve got to take the pain and turn that into something that’s powerful to help women.”