Former Red Sox star Curt Schilling told a sports talk show Friday that his video game company collapsed suddenly, but public records and interviews show the Rhode Island venture was struggling for months before its troubles climaxed in May.

Schilling’s firm, 38 Studios, was frantically trying to raise cash early this year, prompting it to strike a deal in January to sell millions of film tax credits it had yet to receive from Rhode Island. The company also stopped making payments to major vendors. It stopped paying health insurance premiums to Blue Cross and Blue Shield in March while Atlas Van Lines was owed money for several months after moving employees.

“This didn’t happen at all once,” said Nathan F. Coco, a bankruptcy lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery LLP in Chicago. “It’s clear they were suffering financial distress over some period of time.”

Schilling declined to talk to the Globe Friday. But in a lengthy interview on radio station WEEI, Schilling said, “It all happened so fast. It’s been kind of a surreal 60 days, 75 days.”

The firm’s financial problems became public on May 14, when Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee said the state was trying to find ways to keep 38 Studies solvent after it missed a $1.1 million payment it owed the state. Ten days later, 38 Studios laid off all its roughly 400 employees, and two weeks after that, the video game company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, clearing the way to liquidate the firm.

Chafee has since ordered a forensic audit to sort through the financial remains of 38 Studios, which has left the state on hook for the $75 million loan guarantee used to lure the company to Providence from Massachusetts last year. Federal and state law enforcement agencies have launched an investigation into whether there was any criminal wrongdoing.