‘The Staircase’ Star Rosemarie DeWitt Had to Overcome ‘Some Qualms’ Before Signing On to the True Crime Series
Michael Appler On Wednesday evening in New York City, Colin Firth and the cast of HBO’s “The Staircase” celebrated its premiere at the Museum of Modern Art.Created by Antonio Campos with showrunner Maggie Cohn, “The Staircase” marks HBO’s turn at the true crime story of Kathleen Peterson, who was found dead at the bottom of her staircase in 2001. The story of what followed and came before — her husband Michael Peterson’s indictment and trial, unearthed secrets, treatment by prosecutors and twisting family drama — was first the subject of a 2004 documentary miniseries, then republished and given new episodes by Netflix, and now fictionalized in HBO’s limited series led by Firth and Toni Collette. “I think about Truman Capote and ‘In Cold Blood,’ which was itself a first of its kind,” Parker Posey, who plays the prosecuting attorney Freda Black in the series, told Variety at the premiere.