• Sean Durkin offered the role directly to Sarah Paulson, being a fan on her work on Studio 60.

Spoilers The trivia items below may give away important plot points.  

• There are quite a few similarities between Patrick’s cult or Martha’s story in this movie and the real-life Charles Manson “family” group. Among them: Manson, like Patrick, attracted a group of young and attractive but damaged young men and especially women to a remote, rural compound. Manson often renamed the members of his family–just as Patrick decided that Martha should be named “Marcy May,” Manson dubbed Susan Atkins “Sadie Mae Glutz.” Manson, like Patrick, made sex with all or nearly all of the women a requirement of “family” membership, and both the real Manson and the fictional Patrick encouraged everyone to have multiple sexual partners. Manson murderer Susan Atkins had experienced the early death of her mother and subsequently started having behavioral problems that made her vulnerable to the cult’s allure, as Martha had, and Manson murderer Patricia Krenwinkel fled to a relative’s home after the murders because she was scared the “family” would track her down, as Martha did. Manson, like Patrick, had his more trusted members go out of the compound at night to break into wealthy people’s homes, steal from them, disrupt and terrorize their lives, and ultimately kill some of them.

• The title refers to three of the names that the main character is known by over the course of the movie. “Martha” is the first name that her parents gave her. “Marcy May” is the name that Patrick gives her when she first enters the cult. “Marlene” is the name all the cult’s women are required to use when answering the compound’s telephone (as stated in the long list of instructions written on the wall next to the telephone). The men are all required to call themselves “Michael” on the phone.