‘The Staircase’ Star Rosemarie DeWitt Had to Overcome ‘Some Qualms’ Before Signing On to the True Crime Series

variety.com:

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. “There used to be a boundary with telling stories about crime and those affected by it, but now we want to know what makes them tick.”“If you think about court cases at that time — the Menendez brothers, O.J.

Simpson — court television became a new form of storytelling,” she continued. “And if we’re going to ask when crime becomes entertainment, it starts the second it’s on television.”To that degree, Campos and Cohn have cover for their own exploits into the Petersons’ story.

As his life and family were crumbling in the aftermath of Kathleen’s death, Peterson invited the French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade to document his trial in an effort to rebalance — he thought — unfair treatment by the prosecution.The 2004 documentary which followed — defined by its twists, shocking evidence reveals and slow-burning tone — helped to shape a.