A Texas Whistleblower Is the Star of 2 Truly Different Biopics. Which Is Better?

Because of the non-stop nature of today’s media circus, some stories that could provoke intense discussion tend to be completely sidelined in favor of even more breaking developments.

Although the name “Reality Winner” may not be familiar to the average news consumer, it belongs to a Texas woman who revealed critical information about the state of America’s democratic institutions. If her name feels like something taken out of a film, then it should be no surprise that Reality Winner is at the center of two unusual biopics.

Born in Alice, Texas, Winner became interested in international languages, politics, history and religion thanks to her idiosyncratic father, who gave her the unusual name. Despite an outstanding academic track record that would have guaranteed her admission to any of the top state schools of her choosing, Winner enlisted in the Air Force after graduating from Henrietta M. King Early College High School in Kingsville, Texas.

Winner studied Arabic after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and proved to be a valuable asset to the Air Force thanks to her adept translation skills. Although she found it difficult to find work at various nonprofits for her lack of a college degree, Winner was eventually hired by Pluribus International Corporation, a small firm that agreed to cover her post-secondary education and to make use of her top-secret security clearance.

Despite her immense patriotism, Winner found herself serving as a government employee in the aftermath of the NSA leaks, in which Edward Snowden had revealed classified information about the government’s surveillance protocols, something that was kept secret from the public. As a result of her security clearance, Winner was able to access documents that pointed to the conscious efforts by the government to scrub any evidence that Russian hackers were directly involved in tampering with the results of the 2016 presidential election of President Donald Trump. Winner leaked these documents to The Intercept, and was later arrested and eventually sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Winner was held at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, before being moved to a transitional facility in San Antonio during the summer of 2021. Although she was hailed as an honorable activist by some who felt she was exposing a government conspiracy, supporters of President Trump have criticized her as a dissenter to democracy. Even if the discourse didn’t break through to the public in the same way that the Snowden trial did, Winner’s story was simply too good for Hollywood to ignore.

Occasionally, the film industry will release a pair of “twin films,” which seemingly have the same subject and plot despite coming from different studios. 2013 saw the debut of two “Die Hard in The White House” movies with Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down, 1998 saw the release of two “asteroid disaster” blockbusters with Armageddon and Deep Impact and 1997 featured two different seismic adventure flicks with Dante’s Peak and Volcano. However, it is far more unusual to see two films released about the same real life figure. But HBO’s Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney, and Vertical Entertainment’s Winner, starring Emilia Jones, were released within a year of one another in 2023 and 2024, respectively. 

After using the Winner case as the basis for her stage production Is This a Room, playwright and filmmaker Tina Satter adapted her own work into Reality. The fact-based drama used actual transcripts from Winner’s encounter with two FBI agents who interviewed her about her involvement with the leaks. The authenticity of the production is alarming. It’s scary to imagine the insidious ways in which government agents would be able to so easily convince a young woman to admit her involvement in a serious offense. More interesting is the fact that Winner’s information, despite being discredited by the FBI, was later used to help support a Senate floor hearing about the Russia investigation.

Double Winner

Although the effort to be realistic is perhaps the greatest quality of Reality, the film succeeds based on the extraordinary performance by Sweeney. Sweeney may have earned fame for her breakout roles on the HBO dramas The White Lotus and Euphoria, but Reality is a far more complex role in which she had to replicate the anxiety of a young woman who faces the responsibility of exposing a disruption of the electoral process. It’s a shame that Reality was released directly on HBO without a theatrical release, because Sweeney could’ve been in the conversation to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Developed simultaneously was the dark comedy Winner, a more traditional biopic that explores Winner’s experiences serving in the Air Force, and what prompted her to leak the information. Although structurally it adheres to many cliches common in biographical films, Winner is laced with a snarky sense of humor reminiscent of the fourth-wall breaking wit of The Big Short or the rambunctious energy of The Wolf of Wall Street. At the center of the film is Emilia Jones as an outspoken, unapologetic version of Winner who finds it baffling that she’s the only one willing to do the right thing.

While it lacks the singular focus of Reality, Winner helps to expand upon elements of Winner’s backstory, including her furious reaction to Air Force propaganda, lifelong affinity for animals, troubled romantic life and nuanced relationship with her father – played in a surprisingly tender performance by Zach Galifianakis. Although Jones had earned acclaim for her breakout role in the warm-hearted Best Picture Oscar winner CODA, she gives a far more entertaining, charismatic performance that recalls a young Sandra Bullock or Nicole Kidman.

Audiences in 2012 may have had to choose between two subversive takes on the Snow White story when Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman were released within months of each other, but that shouldn’t dissuade audiences from checking out both films about the Winner scandal. Anyone with a subscription to both HBO and Hulu can explore two interpretations of the same story. Reality is extraordinary in its attention to detail, and Winner is a riveting crowd-pleaser. If anything, viewing both films should hopefully ensure that this important story about a brave Texas woman is not forgotten.