When 26-year-old actress and filmmaker Sophia Maddox got her routine ancestry test results back, she wasn’t greeted by distant European royalty or a lost cousin in Cleveland. Instead, her father, Daniel Arguelles, helped her decipher a far darker secret: his biological father was none other than America’s most notorious cult leader, Charles Manson.
“I was obviously very devastated,” Maddox revealed in an interview. “My dad was just rubbing my back, holding me, telling me we were nothing like him. But it was a little traumatic.”
Naturally, when life hands you a bloodline linked to one of history’s most terrifying figures, you don’t just process it in therapy—you pitch a true crime documentary. And you can watch it, My Grandfather Charles Manson, right now on Hulu.
Co-directed by Maddox and Alexandra Orton, Hulu’s My Grandfather Charles Manson follows Maddox as she dives headfirst into Manson’s brutal legacy, untangles her fraught relationship with her own father, and sits down with former Manson Family members like Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and original trial prosecutor Stephen Kay.
A One-Night Stand at a Bus Stop
The twisted origin story dates back to 1959. Maddox’s father, Daniel, was born after his 17-year-old mother, Darlene, had a fateful one-night stand with a hitchhiking charmer going by the name “Charlie Dear.”
Manson, who went on to orchestrate seven ghastly first-degree murders in 1969 (including the pregnant actress Sharon Tate), died in prison in 2017. While experts endlessly debated his psychiatric diagnoses behind bars, Maddox made a point to ensure her own mental health was checked.
Though therapists gave her a clean bill of health, the worry lingers for future generations. “If my kids inherit issues like bipolar disorder or anxiety, I have a hopeful heart that we have the tools, the support, and the therapists,” she said.
Nature vs. Nurture vs. “Pretty Good” Music
Maddox admits she has shied away from most pop-culture portrayals of her grandfather, though she acknowledges the Manson portrayals in “Mindhunter” and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood were “pretty interesting.”
In the documentary, Maddox visits the Indiana Boys School—a juvenile facility where a 14-year-old Manson was both a victim and a perpetrator of severe abuse. Addressing potential critics on camera, Maddox insists that examining Manson’s trauma doesn’t make her an apologist.
“I don’t believe that facing what his life was is justifying any actions,” she explained. “To end cycles of abuse, you have to look at the root of it.”
While Maddox feels no personal emotional connection to the killer, she admits it’s hard to ignore certain uncanny genetic overlaps—specifically, artistic talent. Long before the Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson was an ambitious musician hanging around the Beach Boys.
“My dad used to sing, act, and model, so it was hard not to see the similarities,” Maddox noted. After assuming for years she wasn’t smart enough to play the guitar, Maddox picked one up and found it came eerily naturally. “Now, it’s kind of a comfort for me.”
A Family Fractured
Unsurprisingly, not everyone in the family wanted to turn the camera on the worst man in America.
Diverging views on digging up the past caused a deep rift between Maddox and her father during filming. The pair remain estranged, though Maddox notes her door is always open for reconciliation.
If there’s an upside to discovering your grandfather is the poster child for pure evil, it’s that it certainly makes for a hell of a directorial debut. Maddox took the ultimate nightmare revelation, faced it head-on, and turned it into prime-time streaming gold. Watch as she explores her newfound lineage in My Grandfather Charles Manson.
