You oughta sue...
the true crime that's worth your time
Linda Fairstein’s lawsuit against Netflix is back in the news. As we noted at the time, Fairstein — a prosecutor turned crime novelist — filed suit against the streamer in 2020. Her beef wasn’t that the company’s recommendation engine sucks or that its search is misleading, but that in When They See Us, the 2019 fictionalization of the Central Park Five Case, she was portrayed as a “racist, unethical villain” and that the series “falsely portrays Ms. Fairstein as in charge of the investigation and prosecution of the case.” While she did indeed run the sex crimes division of the Manhattan DA’s office, she wasn’t the driving force behind the investigation into and prosecution of the men falsely convicted of the crime, her suit claimed.
After years of wrangling, the case is now expected to move forward, the NYT reported last week, with Fairstein’s actual role in the investigation and prosecution as central to the case. Per Judge P. Kevin Castel, there’s evidence that “by opting to portray Fairstein as the series villain who was intended to embody the perceived injustices of a broader system,” When They See Us “reverse-engineered plot points to attribute actions, responsibilities and viewpoints to Fairstein that were not hers.”
While that suddenly makes it clearer why names are changed and “composite characters” appear in “based on a true story” dramas, there are still plenty of folks out there in the world who I am kind of amazed have not objected more strenuously to how they were portrayed. Is there anyone from HBO’s fictionalized The Staircase who came out looking great? If Arthur Leigh Allen were still alive, would Zodiac have been as comfortable about presenting him as they did? You see where I’m going with this.
Casting can be as effective a weapon as a script, I suppose. While not intentional (how could they have known?), it sure didn’t help that Fairstein was portrayed by Felicity Huffman at the arguable height of her own public dislikability. (And it’s meta as hell that not too long after, Netflix would drop its own College Admission Scandal series with Matther Modine as Rick Singer — a bit of casting that should have inspired Singer to send flowers, if anything.) Are there other adaptations where you suspect the makers cast an actor with real-life sentiment against them in an effort to get a subtextual dig in?
So that’s today’s topic: Who should probably sue over how they’ve been portrayed? What casting decisions felt like an attack on a figure? And, if you ended up wrapped up in a high-profile case, would you approve the use of your name in a drama…or has your wisdom as someone who follows the genre prompted you to duck the big screen? — EB