The Staircase · Prince Andrew · Rust
Plus: A prestige version of an infamous kidnapping
the true crime that's worth your time
Can we all take a moment to applaud how The Staircase has been marketed? The dramatic adaptation of the 2004 docuseries about the death of Kathleen Peterson has been a master class in promotion from the start, “leaking” tantalizing morsels from the set to a multitude of publications, and ensuring a virtual wall of headlines and buzz of a highly admirable ascent.
The latest didn’t even have to be leaked to be picked up everywhere: two stills from the show, released by the HBOMax/Warner Media press room as a download to all comers and breathlessly reblogged everywhere. Is this show the Star Wars of true crime? The And Just Like That? The level of media engagement seems comparable. One of the photos is at the top of this item; here’s the other one:
The images came without context, which means that writers had to vamp for just enough grafs to justify our click. It’s hard out there for content farmworkers! I get it.
To their credit, only Deadline accompanied the images with any new information: The Staircase was apparently the subject of a promotional event Tuesday at extremely B2B industry organization the Cable & Telecommunications Association For Marketing, where Colin Firth (who plays accused novelist/accused murderer Michael Peterson) answered a single question about his work on the show.
Peterson has been a free man since 2017, but “I didn’t communicate with” him, Firth said.
I felt the way the script was structured and just the whole approach of this was its own ecosystem, so to speak. These are created characters but we all know what the source is. We all know that these characters have names of living people, but it’s very carefully calibrated to tell the story in a certain way. I felt that I wanted to keep my inspiration, my motivation, and the sense of the source material, as much as possible contained within the script and the way it was written.
It sounds, based on that slender revelation, like Firth was not interested in being overly burdened with the truth as he prepared for the role. I don’t know if I agree with this decision, as if “we all know what the source is” then we’re all likely inclined to watch every portrayal to see how they deviate from what we know from the facts.
Or maybe not? Maybe we’re at the point in the true-crime game that every dramatic adaptation might as well lead with that scene-embedded post-credit line in every episode of Inventing Anna, that "This whole story is completely true. Except for all of the parts that are totally made up." Maybe that’s just the default, now. — EB
Speaking of true crime docuseries with fancy-pants casts…Variety reports that A Friend of the Family, that series on Jan Broberg’s multiple kidnappings that we told you about a couple years ago (damn you, Substack search) has been picked up for a full run by Peacock, so I guess I’ll have to keep that sub going even after I finish watching Marry Me.
Sarah has spent a lot of time mulling Broberg’s case as part of her coverage of Abducted in Plain Sight, the 2017 documentary about Broberg’s abuse and abduction by neighbor and family friend Robert Berchtold.
Sarah also interviewed AiPS director Skye Borgman in 2019, a Q&A paid subscribers can read by clicking below.
Of specific interest, given the plan to adapt the story, is the challenge Borgman faced when it came to weaving in how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (colloquially, the Brobergs and Berchtold were both “Mormons”) played into the tale. From Sarah’s interview:
There was so many times where my editor James Cude and I would really say, "Okay, let's get into this faith a little bit more." And so we'd spend a week or two editing these whole chunks together, and it was this rabbit hole, really. It just turned into this whole other film. We'd steer it back to the Brobergs' story, and then it would go off on a different tangent. I mean, we were lucky in a sense because there was no clock ticking, and so we had the time to explore a lot of different avenues with the film. But I really do, I love the film that we ended up with. I mean, I really love the film. There's part of me that goes, "I really wish we'd been able to delve into the LDS within this film."
But then there's another part of me that I know that it would have just been a completely different story. I'm certainly interested in looking at that a little bit more. Again, it's not even just LDS faith, but I think it's honestly really patriarchal institutions and the coverups that happen. I mean, if we look around us right now, we're seeing it left and right. That to me is a very fascinating topic. I'd love to dive into that. I don't know if it's necessarily a sequel, per se, to this film, but to look at these ideas maybe within different contexts in other stories.
It seems like the narrative wall that Borgman — who is a consulting producer on the dramatic series — ran into might be better scaled by a series, especially one constructed with focus and a sure hand. The hand on the wheel for A Friend of the Family is Nick Antosca, the co-creator of The Act. The cast, as announced thus far:
Anna Paquin (True Blood) as family matriarch (and series co-producer) Mary Ann Broberg
Colin Hanks (who I just realized is not Jack Quaid, my bad — this is the Orange County guy) is Bob Broberg, Mary Ann’s husband
Jake Lacy (The White Lotus) will get out of the Pineapple Suite to play abuser/kidnapper Robert Berchtold
Lio Tipton (formerly Analeigh Tipton, third-place winner on Cycle 11 of America’s Next Top Model) plays Gail Berchtold, Robert’s wife.
Casting for Jan Broberg, who is also a producer on the show, has yet to be announced, nor has an expected release date for the series. — EB
Prince Andrew won’t be going to trial. As we all know, the Jeffrey Epstein cohort has been accused of sexual abuse by at least one woman, documented Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. It seemed, for a while, that Andrew was intent on taking things to trial — the same brilliant thinking that prompted his bizarre self-defense interview when his relationship with the convicted sex offender first came to light.
The AP reports that Giuffre’s attorneys released a statement — presumably agreed on by both sides as part of the arrangement — that reads, in part,
Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew have reached an out of court settlement. The parties will file a stipulated dismissal upon Ms. Giuffre’s receipt of the settlement (the sum of which is not being disclosed).
Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks.
According to the statement, Prince Andrew acknowledged that Epstein trafficked “countless young girls” over many years and said the prince “regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others.”
Per the New York Times, “Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the settlement, saying it was a matter for the Duke and his legal team,” which is a pretty sick burn. “A spokesman for Andrew declined to comment on the source of funds for the settlement,” which poses an interesting question — indeed, who will finance the payout? Here’s some speculation from the Guardian:
Andrew now faces paying a hefty bill in legal costs and an undisclosed sum that could run into millions. One unconfirmed report put it at £7.5m, while lawyers said it could exceed £10m.
It is not known if the Queen, who supported Andrew’s royal work from the private income she receives from the Duchy of Lancaster estate, will be contributing to his costs and settlement. Andrew recently sold a Swiss ski chalet that he bought in 2014 with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson for a reported £18m.
Just throwing it out there — is there a way to tackle the rise and fall of Andrew that doesn’t marginalize Epstein’s victims and/or turn into a House of Gucci-level “Is this supposed to be funny? It feels like it’s supposed to be funny but I am not sure!” mess? (I liked HoG! It was a mess! Those things can coexist.)
I feel like there’s got to be a way to tackle Andrew, and what it seems like he’s implicitly admitting to, as a rich ding-dong-fuckup true-crime tale. If a studio asked you to adapt the allegedly criminal parts of Andrew’s life into a property, how would you tackle it? — EB
Where malice meets incompetence, you’ll find Rust. Y’all, I just came up with that! I feel like I can retire now. Anyway, I have been waiting on doing much about the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust because its relationship with crime has been murky. No one believed that Alec Baldwin shot her or director Joel Souza on purpose (well, some people assumed he did when the news first broke, but given Baldwin’s, uh, volatile persona I can see why one might infer that in the absence of facts), and workplace accidents happen — while civil cases might result, it’s not a de facto crime crime.
A report in Vanity Fair that published today might have tipped things into crime crime for me, though, given the negligence alleged. It’s a meticulous report from journalist/novelist Anthony Breznican, which centers Mary Carmack-Altwies, Santa Fe’s freshly minted district attorney. The former public defender is rapidly moving toward the spotlight — or, rather, the spotlight is moving toward her, as she’s the one who will figure out if what went down on the set of the film rises to the level of prosecution. I think it’s safe to assume that this isn’t the kind of case she was expecting when she ran, unopposed, for the DA gig in 2020.
In late February, the D.A.’s office expects to receive a forensics report from the FBI’s crime lab that they hope will reveal critical details about the live round of ammunition that killed Hutchins, including—possibly—who physically handled it, placing the deadly object in an environment where it never should have been. Santa Fe sheriff Adan Mendoza said at a press conference in October that about 500 cartridges had been recovered from the set. “That is a mix of blanks, dummy rounds, and what we are suspecting are live rounds,” he said. Dummies are inert props that only look like bullets, loosely filled with tiny BBs so they rattle like maracas. Blanks are brass casings loaded with explosive powder to create a bang and smoke but have no projectile to launch. Live rounds, by contrast, are lethal and have no place in make-believe. “They shouldn’t have been there,” Mendoza told reporters.
While the district attorney hasn’t yet filed charges and won’t know for several more months if she will, Carmack-Altwies already sees that Hutchins’s death was caused not by a single action but by numerous failures and mistakes. The cinematographer, mother, and wife was killed by an event cascade—each incident contributing to the moment that claimed her life. Virtually no one involved is willing to admit to any culpability, especially as the threat of prosecution looms.
What follows is a careful breakdown of that cascade, a detail-laden piece that is a snack to process fans like most of us here. If you’re looking for an interesting read with your morning coffee tomorrow, or just something to kill time until the clock runs out and your long weekend begins, you could do worse than this story. — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: Did someone say long weekend? Yes, in the U.S. it’s Presidents Day on Monday, so Sarah and I will be off doing our annual day of volunteering to make sure no president ever, ever goes hungry. Just kidding! We’re just taking the holiday off. We’ll be back on Tuesday with veganism, evangelicals, and oiled-up strippers. See you then!
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