Hulu’s Transcendent True-Crime Drama Resists the Genre’s Trappings to the Very End (2024)

The finale ofHulu’s true-crime miniseriesUnder the Bridgeis out on Wednesday, but don’t expect one of those heart-stopping endings where viewers finally find out who the murderer was. That’s because the show revealed that information several episodes ago, and besides, anyone with access to the internet could have found the answer whenever they wanted. The series tells the story of the real death of Canadian teenager Reena Virk (played by Vritika Gupta), who was beaten and killed by a group of teenagers, some of whom were her friends, in 1997. In this telling, a journalist (Riley Keough, playing the late Rebecca Godfrey, who wrote the book upon which the series is based) and a cop (Lily Gladstone) investigate the case. But the adaptation, created by Quinn Shephard and executive produced by Samir Mehta, resists the familiar true-crime rhythms, aiming instead to bring humanity and empathy to a genre frequently accused of lacking in both. In the final episode, “Mercy Alone,” one of Reena’s killers goes before a jury and everyone else seeks closure. Shephard and Mehta spoke to Slate about the moving finale, the show’s cast of stars and stars in the making, and the challenges of adapting a true story. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Slate: What kicked off your interest in this project? Was it reading Rebecca Godfrey’s book?

Quinn Shephard:The book was definitely my entry point. I had never heard of the crime before the book. It’s not super well known in the U.S., which is interesting because it’s really, really famous in British Columbia. Our producer Tara Duncan brought the book to me. And I didn’t know, but Rebecca herself had been trying to get it made for television for over 10 years. I think a lot of people had read it and been like, This is about the heaviest story you could try to adapt. The style of writing really fascinated me, which was what sort of sparked my idea to make Rebecca a character. So then I went on that journey with her. I interviewed Rebecca for a few years, and I was developing the pilot. And then Samir came when there was already a pilot, to partner with me as the showrunner.

Samir Mehta:A lot of those early conversations were just speaking about the type of story we wanted to tell, how todifferentiate it from typical true crime, how to subvert the expectation of what you’d expect the show to even be given the subject matter, and to not do a traditional murder mystery and to just elevate the storytelling. It was clear from the very beginning that we were on the same page.

What else struck you early on as something in the book that might need to change during the adaptation process?

Shephard:We knew that there was a lack of Reena’s perspective in the bookUnder the Bridge. We had her dad’s book as material too, but even with that, there was still quite a lot to be discovered. I had had a lot of fear in my development of the series of not knowing how to navigate—it was my first time working on a true story.

Mehta:I’ve done one or two true-crime stories before. What trickles into pop culture and what’s in the research you get are usually just these major events. But there’s, of course, a lot missing in the middle. You don’t know exactly what happened in between those big moments that you hear of in the news. But that’s the stuff of drama. That’s the stuff that we’re actually tuning in to watch.

My understanding is that Cam, Gladstone’s character, was an invention for the show. I’d love to hear more about why and how you decided to add her and her romance with Rebecca.

Shephard:When I was in the very early development of the adaptation, once it became clear that Rebecca being a lead character was going to be key to the show, it opened up an obvious need to have a counterbalance for her in the series. I think that one of the things that makes Rebecca so fascinating and really characterizes her book is a deep, deep sympathy for the perpetrators. We needed to have somebody who would look at the crime equally personally but who would not be as seduced by the stories of the kids who did this. Cam was inspired by a number of real people. There was one woman who worked on the case, who had personal ties with some of the teens, that we took little pieces from, little bits of dialogue. In real life, Rebecca did have a really interesting romance with somebody involved—not a cop, but somebody involved in the investigation. And because Cam was a composite of a lot of male characters, we were like, Why change these interesting details just because we’ve made her a woman? I don’t think that characters who are that polar opposite would continue to come back and unpack their grief and their feelings on the crime together in such a personal way if they didn’t have a kind of pull to each other.

Mehta:So much of the story and the journey we were writing for Rebecca was for her to confront a lot of her demons and reckon with some aspects of her childhood. There’s really no better way to dig that out than in an intimate relationship because that’s where you become the most vulnerable and raw. We knew that the heightened intimacy of a romantic relationship would really bring that out.

What roles were the hardest to cast?

Mehta:Probably Reena. Our casting director saw several hundred girls from around the country.

Shephard:Like 700, yeah.

Mehta:Because it’s such a specific sensibility to find someone who can inhabit the journey of Reena from the innocence of this place of prerebellion, then to watch her very naturally start to develop her independence, a desire to rebel against her parents, and then move into this truly defiant character that she is towards the end. It’s getting into the actual details of that progression, which can sometimes from the outside be characterized as Oh, one day hormones hit and she transformed. I think that’s a reductive way of putting it into one sentence. But we wanted an actor to portray all of the moments that actually create that change in adolescence.

Shephard:It was that feistiness that she has that made us so excited. We almost didn’t look at her because she was so young that, I think, it was scary. She was only 12 years old. I think our casting director was even like, “Oh my gosh, this girl might even just be too young for the show.” And then she came in and did a Zoom read with us, and she did all this improv where she was fighting with her mom. That was where I think I turned the camera off and I was like, “Samir, that’s her.”

I hadn’t realized she was 12! But it makes sense because the young actors on this show are so different from the ones you might see on a more glossy show likeRiverdale.

Mehta:That was something that was very important to us, to cast true to age, because the crime would just feel different if we hadRiverdaleteens playing these kids. We pushed very hard to make sure we cast that way. Of course there was the fear of Oh, can you really find performers who are going to be on the level for how complex the roles are, if you go that young?

Shephard:I really believe that acting isn’t something you necessarily need a lot of years of training for. It’s tapping into something very real, and I think that’s what we encouraged them to all do. And they blew me away.

Then how did Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone come on board?

Mehta:You could never dream of getting those two, and to have gotten them in the way we did is insane. Basically, I moved into a new house just before I got this show and just met my neighbor, who happened to be friends with Riley. And he made that introduction to her producing partner, Gina [Gammell]. It was truly seamless. She read the script, and we had a meeting with her, and she was in. I think she connected personally with a lot of aspects of the show. And then we had always thought about Lily in the Cam role, and it just so happened that Riley and Lily had been in contact over the years. They had not met in real life, but they were fans of one another. We just had some positive momentum there, where I think Lily was inclined to work with Riley, and before we knew it we had our dream cast locked in.

Shephard:And then with getting Archie [Panjabi], way before Archie knew whatUnder the Bridgewas or who we were, we were openly in the writers room, working on a scene about Suman and being like, “Archie is gonna body this.”

What was it like working on a period piece and trying to re-create the world of the ’90s, especially working with so many young people who hadn’t even been born then?

Shephard:Vritika was born in 2010. I think when she told us that, I was like, I gotta go.

Mehta:We had a great production designer, Jen Morden, who was really great at that aspect of it. We built so many sets—because we had so little time, we couldn’t afford to move locations, so we ended up building something like 30 sets. Stepping into that space like it’s a time capsule, I think, really helped the actors just completely disappear into the past. As far as writing it, I did grow up in the ’90s, so there was a lot of me tapping into my actual middle school and high school experience. Fortunately, there’s a lot more conversation right now around bullying. It was actually really heartening to see the way that the kids currently have such a level of maturity around these concepts.

Shephard:I’m a big believer that sometimes things that are period can feel more current than things that are set in the modern day because there is a reluctance to admit, especially inteen modern-day content, that a lot of these themes are still very active and still a big problem in people’s lives. It’s admirable that we’re making more content about youth that is showing a world that we want to move towards, but I also think it’s not necessarily relatable for all youth. It’s gonna sound like a really strange reference for something likeUnder the Bridge, butPen15was a show that, when I watched it, I’ve never related to a TV show more. The way that that show uses the early 2000s to navigate such incredibly complex issues, but in middle school language and experience, is honestly brilliant.

The soundtrack is a big part of setting the scene inUnder the Bridge, and a Biggie CD plays a pivotal role in the plot. Why is that something you decided to emphasize?

Shephard:I think that’s always the thing that people are surprised is so true to the real story. We have photos where it’s just, like, this sea of white Canadian preteen boys in all blue and wearing bandannas and throwing up Crip signs. Speaking to the ’90s, the kids don’t have terms for cultural appropriation yet; it’s just a feeling of a glamorization of organized crime and gangs. I really liked the idea that these girls were obsessed with male displays of power and violence. Idolizing Crips and John Gotti, to me, is a young woman going, No one would ever f*ck with them. And that’s what I want to be. We see so many female characters who are looking to be sexy or desirable or soft within a male gaze. And I think this is actually about a group of women who are looking to get their power back because it’s all been taken from them by circ*mstance. And that also leads to violence.

Mehta:It’s such a fascinating time in the culture that the actual Crip and Blood feud was then commodified and sold by the hip-hop industry. It was in magazines; it was in the lyrics. Almost as though it was pro-wrestling characters: You choose and cheer on your side, even though these are real people really hurting each other.

How did you think about getting the dynamics between the girls and their friendships right? They can be so hot and cold, and they just turn on a dime.

Shephard:That’s just straight-up my childhood. I think a lot of young girls who lash out at other young girls are in environments that are unstable or environments that have a lot of bullying and teach them that culture. All of this is separate from Kelly Ellard, because her track record of not having any remorse or empathy is very known, but I think with all the other characters, it was about leading with as much empathy as possible when writing scenes of them being incredibly cruel. Every insult or every move that the girls make is driven by something deeper, like a level of self-hatred or insecurity or something that their parent might have said to them. The reason that Josephine goes from soft towards Reena and then turns on a dime and cuts her out is because Josephine admitted her vulnerability to Reena, and that scares her.

With a lot of series like this that contain a murder, it’s about solving it, or maybe there’s some sort of twist and you’re waiting to figure out what that is. But we find out who the murderer is halfway through this series. How did you think about the arc of the show, knowing that you weren’t going to end on a reveal or a twist?

Mehta:That was very deliberate. We know that people are going to begin this show with that expectation, so we wanted to use that expectation to actually do better storytelling. You watch it and you expect that by the finale the killer will be revealed. We give you that answer way sooner than you think, which immediately is going to make the audience go, OK, if I know who it is now, then what is this show even going to become? And then, of course, the second we tell you who it is, we go into the ’70s. And then there’s another reveal, of course, of the Warren [Glowatski, played by Javon Walton] involvement. And then, ultimately, you realize this show was never really a whodunit. It was never really supposed to be a crime show. In some sense, you weren’t expecting a show with this bleak a subject to end up being really hopeful, where you have this woman displaying unbelievable strength by forgiving her daughter’s killer.

I was never sure whether I should look up what happened on Wikipedia or how to deal with the question of spoilers for a true story.

Real crime is not thrilling. It’s just verytragic.

Mehta:Just being aware that we live in 2024, people are impatient, they will look it up on Wikipedia. We wanted the show to be Wikipedia-proof, where you can look it up and you think you got to the end, but then we tell you the answer sooner than you think. We wanted the show to exist almost in conjunction with the internet, where we knew what you might do, and that actually works in our favor. The more you think you know because you read Wikipedia, the harder the show will actually hit you with the twist.

I was most tempted to turn to Wikipedia or Google to see what happened to Dusty—I was really covering my eyes during the train scene.

Shephard:That scene is real. It was not with the main girl that Dusty is based off of, because Dusty is a composite— she’s based off of a few different characters. But that is a real scene. It’s from the real-life Josephine’s testimony to the police.

I want to talk about the finale and the trial. I have to ask about Kelly’s testimony and that moment when she just started talking in a British accent.

Shephard:Also true!

Mehta:Yeah, she just started doing it. That is one of those “just too strange to believe, but it did happen” things.

Shephard:Was she just bored? When you read her court transcripts, it seems like she’s just fidgety and bored and, like, doing things to entertain herself. And then sometimes it seems like she’s trying to gain sympathy, but she’s so out of touch with how to do that that it’s like, Maybe I’ll do a little voice. We definitely talked about it with Izzy [G, who plays Kelly] because when you’re playing a role like that, even if that character is viewed as a total psychopath by most people, you can’t view somebody that way when you’re playing them. Izzy really wanted to break down every beat of those wild choices that Kelly makes during her testimony and go, like, “OK, I think that Kelly is doing this here because she thinks a British girl is a more sympathetic or more proper girl and that’s gonna get sympathy,” and then “I’m losing my temper here because I am really scared.”

I was really shocked by the unfairness of Kelly’s sentence as compared to Warren’s.

Mehta:It’s frustrating when you realize that that’s what really happened and that Kelly was granted so many appeals, and then she never actually showed any remorse. When you’re watching a show, you really want that satisfying ending where justice is served and the bad people go away. We can’t do that because it didn’t happen. But that’s another point of the show, that sometimes it’s not about what the outside forces can do to satisfy you. It’s about: What can you do to take control of your own life and heal in a way that you have agency over?

Kelly is just so hard to think about in a show that otherwise emphasized empathy because she showed no remorse, and she seemed to come from the best background of any of them. Partly this is an unanswerable question, but what are we supposed to do with people like Kelly?

Mehta:My philosophy on it, and what I think is at the core of this show, is that it’s a study in free will, on some level. In this show, you can see all of the life circ*mstances that led to these kids behaving how they did. And so it raises the question: Were they really free to do anything other than what they did if they weren’t free to choose the circ*mstances that surround them? That allows us to maybe have a little bit more compassion for people who do bad things. But then it still raises the question: What do we do with psychopaths and sociopaths who are here to harm us? And I think the only answer is: Let’s keep ourselves safe. Let’s make sure that the dangerous ones are not amongst us. But it’s possible to regard them with a little less hate, the way that you wouldn’t hate a dangerous animal in the wild—you know better, you know to keep away, you know to protect yourself from them.

You spoke a little about your apprehension about telling a true story. What has it been like to know that it’s airing and that some of the people involved may be watching?

Shephard:I think that’s the hardest part of the whole process. Samir and I have talked about this a lot, but I think both of us kind of walked away from this being like, We’re never going to do true crime again. This is going on my fifth year of working on this story, and I don’t think I could have possibly understood how much a part of me it would become and how close I would become to some of the real people. Real crime is not thrilling. It’s just very tragic. I think a huge point of the anxiety and insecurity for me around the whole process with the show was worrying about how it might affect the real people when it came out. That’s certainly not gone away now that it’s airing.

I guess the only thing I would add on the topic of it reaching real people is maybe just a message to viewers: Don’t try to go after the real people. There’s a reason we changed some of the real people’s names. I was scrolling on TikTok the other day and I got a TikTok that was of the real-life Josephine. Someone had found the news footage of her. There were hundreds of thousands of views and comments and people being like, “Oh my God, the actress nailed her mannerisms at the end.” It’s a weird thing. On one hand, I do not blame people for the curiosity. I love seeing the real people who people play, but it also scares me. We’re doing this because I think Reena’s story is so important to tell. It is not because we want to disrupt the lives of anyone that we represented in the show.

Mehta:To do this story justice, you can’t just report it. You kind of have to become part of it. It moves through you. I think that is something that we have to reckon with, that we’re sort of permanently now part of this horrible tragedy in some way. It’s the only way to do it right. Otherwise, it would have just been a Wikipedia page and not an emotional journey.