Murdaugh Housekeeper Compared Her Relationship with Maggie to a Movie — and Said Maggie Was Being 'Shunned' (Exclusive) By KC Baker

Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson likens her friendship with her late boss, Maggie Murdaugh, to a sweet-natured housewife and her maid portrayed in the 2011 Academy Award-winning movie, The Help.

In the movie, based on Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling book of the same name, a Black housekeeper named Minnie (played by Octavia Spencer) gets blackballed by her former employer and starts working for Celia, (played by Jessica Chastain), a young housewife who was looked down upon by the other women in their small 1960s Mississippi town.

Simpson tells PEOPLE: “They become friends. That’s a similar situation to me and Maggie.” 

Simpson opens up about her life with the Murdaughs in her new memoir, Within the House of Murdaugh: Amid a Unique Friendship — Blanca and Maggie, out this month and co-authored with Mary Frances Weaver.

In the book, Simpson writes about how she wasn’t sure what to expect when she started working as a housekeeper for Maggie Murdaugh in 2007. She had been working for Maggie’s husband, then-attorney Alex Murdaugh, helping him translate for Spanish-speaking clients at his law firm and had seen Maggie in passing.

But she had never actually met the wife of the scion of the influential Murdaugh dynasty that has been serving as prosecutors and attorneys in the South Carolina Lowcountry for more than a century. “Everybody knew who Maggie was,” she writes. 

She had heard that Maggie could be cold and distant. But the woman she eventually met couldn’t have been more down-to-earth when she welcomed Simpson into her home in Hampton to begin working for the family.

Simpson says some people look down on her because she is Mexican-American and a housekeeper. But the Murdaughs – Alex, Maggie and their two sons, Buster and Paul, “never once treated me in that way,” she tells PEOPLE. 

Alex and Maggie, she says, “always looked out for me.”

Sometimes when she and Maggie were out together, she says she could tell when someone perhaps thought less of her.

“She never did,” she says. “She never turned away from it. It didn’t bother her. And I appreciated that. And that meant a lot to me, because you could see it in people’s faces. And she never flinched, never.”

Blanca and Maggie spent so much time together that over time they became good friends.

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Their friendship even deepened after Paul drunkenly crashed his boat in 2019, killing Mallory Beach, 19, and people began “shunning” the family, Simpson says. 

Some in the community felt that Paul was getting preferential treatment because of his powerful family, including his father and grandfather, had served as prosecutors and lawyers in Colleton County for more than a century.

“[Maggie] was given the cold shoulder by some people,” says Simpson. “But she realized she could depend on me and we developed more of a friendship.”

Maggie could be “loud,” she says, and was always laughing. “She just had that personality,” she says. 

Simpson and Maggie’s husband had a nice relationship, Simpson says. “She would tell him, ‘We worked all day,’ and she’d send a picture of a toffee brownie or a dessert with ice cream. These are just things that she did. 

“When we would go pick up the vehicles from getting maintenance, she’d sit in the parking lot and talk to my husband, and they’d be sitting there laughing about I don’t know what, but it’s just a personality that she had.”

For more about Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson and the Murdaugh family, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.

In March 2023, Alex, now 57, was convicted of murdering Maggie and Paul, and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole. He was later found guilty of a slew of financial crimes and is appealing the murder conviction. 

Simpson wrote the book in part to honor Maggie’s memory, let the world know how loving and generous she was, and shine a light on the special friendship the two shared.

“Hopefully this will touch the hearts of some people,” says Simpson.

Within the House of Murdaugh: Amid a Unique Friendship – Blanca and Maggie by Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson and Mary Frances Weaver, is available now, wherever books are sold.