Michael Peterson

Michael Peterson's lawyer David Rudolf told Newsweek his issues with "The Staircase" on HBO Max's accuracy, describing it as "outright false" at points.

In the end, Lestrade and Brunet won and the scene with Clayton Peterson was included in the documentary instead. Like Peterson, Ratliff was found at the bottom of her stairs with injuries to her head. I talked to the witnesses, I got the German police report and the DA's file. So much so, that the court in Durham ordered the exhumation of Ratliff's body from her grave in Texas. It is true that Peterson and Brunet did date, with Peterson confirming to The News and Observer they went their separate ways in 2017. In the fifth episode, Brunet and Lestrade are seen arguing with their producer over which clip to delete from the documentary. He continued: "In other words, by that point, Michael didn't have any assets and the court appointed us to represent him on appeal and paid U.S. court-appointed rates. "It was a great blow to both of us, for which I feel not guilt, but sorrow," he continued. I couldn't afford to live in Paris and my children, and grandchildren were in America," he said. He did meet with Michael Stuhlbarg who portrayed him in the series and even lent him his real glasses to wear during the film. To begin with, he said that the scene where he was introduced to Michael Peterson (played by Colin Firth) in a diner while eating pastrami did not happen in real life. Since his guilty conviction, much has happened in Michael Peterson's case, from a retrial in 2011 to being officially released from prison in 2017 after entering an Alford Plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter.

The truth about Michael Peterson and Sophie Brunet's relationship compared to how 'The Staircase' on HBO Max portrays it.

However, in reality, Brunet and Peterson’s relationship began after she stopped working on the documentary to work on other projects. And again: I had absolutely no dog in the fight for the first eight episodes. As de Lestrade, The Staircase’s producer Allyson Luchak, editor Scott Stevenson, and Peterson’s lawyer David S. Rudolf told Vanity Fair, the HBO Max series got one significant aspect of Peterson and Brunet’s relationship incorrect. According to de Lestrade, Brunet’s relationship with Peterson never impacted her work. HBO Max’s The Staircase dramatizes Kathleen Peterson’s death and Michael Peterson’s case that followed. On Dec. 9, 2001, Kathleen reportedly fell down the stairs to her death.

The HBO Max series doesn't know, and as Maggie Cohn explained to IndieWire, the show is about making viewers comfortable with not knowing.

We had concurrent timelines, we had the multiple depictions, [as a way of] slowly letting you become, as a viewer, comfortable with the idea that this is just a story and that we can never fully know anything. I can relate to the idea that there’s something you desperately want to communicate about yourself to the world, but you’re not quite sure how to do it, and that people do pick up on it, and sense you don’t know how to talk about it. When Michael says, “At the end of the day, will you ever fully know anyone?” That’s the risk we were taking, hope that people who are more familiar with and fans of the true-crime genre are willing to go on that ride with us. That’s unsettling to give into, that we don’t have all the answers about this and about many things in life. In the first episode of the documentary, Michael talks about how Kathleen knew about that. Maggie Cohn: We knew Episode 7 was going to be that catharsis not only for Kathleen. The exorcism of these bats is a metaphor for their relationship, just festering and not dealt with. Antonio and I always felt the same way of “you don’t get to say what she knew,” because we don’t know everything fully about a person. It has to be expelled, she has to get it out of her. The foundation that we set in 7 allowed Episode 8, our final episode, to be slightly more ethereal and ambiguous, while creating that feeling of making people feel OK with the unknown. The show’s very last moments handle this with an eerie sleight of hand, the sound cutting out on Kathleen’s voice as she shouts at Michael, “Why didn’t you tell me?” and smash cut to him alone, by the pool, in his truth. The series, as Cohn explained to IndieWire in an interview, is all about ambiguity and being comfortable with not knowing the truth. IndieWire spoke with Cohn about these accusations and some of the finale’s big leaps — including depicting a much-debated plausibility that Kathleen actually knew about her husband’s bisexuality, despite his eventual confession that she never in fact did.

The real-life main subject of both 'Staircase' series – Michael Peterson – is speaking out in an exclusive series of emails to Variety.

He is the individual responsible for what happened to us, and while I am sorely pissed at Campos for all the liberties he took with the truth (and for stealing from my book Behind the Staircase — the only source for his prison scenes, and for which I of course was not compensated), I am angrier at Jean who should have had our interests in mind when he sold our story. It is disingenuous and hypocritical for Jean to talk about his integrity being challenged when he sold himself to Campos, and showed no integrity or sense of responsibility to us. Peterson continues: “He is the individual responsible for what happened to us, and while I am sorely pissed at Campos for all the liberties he took with the truth (and for stealing from my book “Behind the Staircase” — the only source for his prison scenes, and for which I of course was not compensated), I am angrier at Jean who should have had our interests in mind when he sold our story. “I like and respect Jean, but no matter how he tries to spin it, he received somewhere around $75,000 for our story, a paltry sum, certainly in light of the horrific damage my family suffered,” Peterson says. We feel that Jean pimped us out — sold OUR story to Campos for money — what word other than pimped describes what he did? Sounds harsh—but look at the result to our family for what he did.” “In a way I thought I was protecting Michael and his family by being involved, but I was wrong.” He says that when he met with Campos over a decade ago to discuss fictionalizing the “The Staircase,” the eventual showrunner made it clear to him that Peterson and his case were in the public domain. Ultimately de Lestrade decided to sell Campos the rights to his materials, the actual amount of which is disputed by de Lestrade and Peterson. “We feel that Jean pimped us out — sold OUR story to Campos for money — what word other than pimped describes what he did?” “There are egregious fabrications and distortions of the truth in the HBO series, well beyond what may be considered ‘artistic’ license.” Antonio Campos’ depiction of documentary filmmakers Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Sophie Brunet in HBO Max’s “ The Staircase” has led to a public dispute over their portrayal in the miniseries adaptation.

Peterson, played by Colin Firth in the series, is angry both at showrunner Antonio Campos, and original Staircase documentarian Jean-Xavier de Lestrade.

There are egregious fabrications and distortions of the truth in the HBO series, well beyond what may be considered “artistic” license. It’s starting to sound like nobody involved in the events depicted in HBO’s new fictionalized crime series The Staircase is especially happy about how the series has turned out. “What word other than pimped describes what he did?”

The HBO series, a dramatization of the famous 2004 documentary, makes tantalizing equivalences between the filmmaking process and the justice system.

A hallmark of the true-crime genre is the reënactment of the crime. The producer wants to fire Brunet, who at this point in the drama has begun writing to Michael, and while the two men bicker the ensemble plays on, with de Lestrade occasionally pausing to give the musicians feedback. He comes to adore the camera, allowing his interlocutors the access that made de Lestrade’s “Staircase” so revolutionary to the form. In one scene, de Lestrade and his producer are in a soundproof studio; on the other side of the barrier, a string ensemble is recording music for the final edit. This meta element is Campos’s intervention, his “something new.” He presents de Lestrade as an artist with an elegant narrational strategy, who is drawn to tales of murder and dishonesty and yet seems reluctant to pass judgment. One threatens divorce in the morning and initiates a dance at a gala in the evening. One evening, a drunken Kathleen, in an attempt to show off for some guests, dives head first into the pool and doesn’t surface. It cannily portrays the Petersons’ issues as innocuous one moment—who among us doesn’t have a relative with a record, or a drinking problem, or a closeted sex life—and foreboding the next. His version, a baroque drama that reimagines not only the tragedy of the Peterson family but also the filming of de Lestrade’s documentary, depicts the transfigurative process by which facts are stacked and elevated to narrative. Because of the nonlinear pacing, Kathleen (Toni Collette) is simultaneously dead and alive. In 2004, when the French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade released “The Staircase,” his documentary series, the title referred to a crime scene. Eighteen years after its première, accounting for the popularity of the true-crime genre is like accounting for the sun: it’s here today and it will be here tomorrow, and more than thirty minutes of exposure can cause a rash.

TheWrap Emmy Magazine: Antonio Campos and Maggie Cohn explain how they dug into an "impenetrable" character for their HBO limited series.

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HBO Max's dramatization of 'The Staircase' has rested its case — but did it answer all of our questions? Read our finale recap.

“It just wasn’t the whole thing.” In 2017, Michael calls his kids and tells them he’s not going to Paris and that he hopes to see them soon. He finally admits he’s not coming to Paris, and when she gets upset, he finally explodes: “I don’t want to live with women anymore!” He also admits he doesn’t know if he ever loved her (ouch), and Sophie runs off in tears. Margie is now working on a documentary of her own, and she wonders if she should’ve gone to his plea, but her siblings agree that it’s “still hard to be around him.” Candace fumes that he’s free and blames herself for not warning Kathleen about him earlier: “I had a feeling.” Plus, we also flash back to the night of Kathleen’s death; she bemoans the fact that they have to give up Paris and Aruba, but Michael is happy to settle for “pasta and Blockbusters.” On the way home, he tells Sophie he’s broke, but she vows to take care of him, and they share an intimate moment in the bedroom. He celebrates with his family in 2011, though he’s fitted with an ankle bracelet and given a 10 pm curfew. In 2017, Michael pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter and is free to go.

In 2003, Peterson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. A judge vacated the verdict in 2011 and granted a new trial when it was ...

It should be noted that in Mr. Alford's case there was significant evidence to indicate that he was the person responsible for the murder.” Others feel he is an innocent man caught in the web of an unjust legal system. Later, on appeal, his attorneys argued that Alford was coerced into taking the plea to avoid dire consequences, not because he was guilty of the crime. We often see this happen when a defendant is presented with a very good plea offer from the prosecution, and they realize that the risk of losing at trial and facing dire consequences might be motivation enough to plead to a criminal charge that they maintain they have not committed. He was in his seventies and financially drained and this deal allowed him to regain his freedom. She was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their Durham, North Carolina mansion.

Michael Peterson's lawyer David Rudolf gave Newsweek an update on some of the big things that have happened since Peterson entered his Alford Plea in 2017.

They separated in the 1980s and divorced in the early 1990s. I think he dismissed it at first, but again, I think like with me, gradually over time, you start to take it a little bit more seriously, given all the other information that exists. Speaking to Newsweek, Rudolf gave an update on Michael Peterson's whereabouts: "He's [Michael Peterson] living in Durham and has an apartment. The injuries to Kathleen's head also mirrored the marks of an owl's talon. He continued, "He [Peterson] was like the rest of us. I couldn't afford to live in Paris and my children, and grandchildren were in America. And [Sophie] said, well, if you can't commit to live with me all the time, let's end it and it was a great blow to both of us.… In conversation with French publication L'Express, The Staircase documentary director de Lestrade shared: "This is one of the incredible things that happened during those 15 years. You know, I think he's just done with it. In 2003, after a lengthy legal trial, Peterson was convicted of killing his wife Kathleen Peterson on December 9, 2001. But she never let her own feelings affect the course of editing." Whether this argument happened in real life is unknown but it is true that their romance did not last. I could not give her what she really needed and deserved."

It's been more than 20 years since Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the foot of a staircase in the Durham, North Carolina mansion the 48-year-old Nortel ...

In the last few minutes of the series, we get one last look at Michael Peterson. After spending time with him at a distance, now we zoom in for a close-up. Whatever we’ve seen, it’s clear that what we do know about the Petersons is just so many stories, stories that implicate the storyteller and the viewer too. “This man is a liar,” Sophie cries, though she can’t quite make the leap to murderer: “He didn’t. He couldn’t.” Love may be a process of editing. His answer is long and tedious, a philosophical indulgence about whether we ever really know the one we love. If we got a lot of Michael in the docuseries, the drama attempts to correct that too, countering his gravitational pull by bringing Kathleen to life. Brunet’s love for Peterson is bound up with her work and she fights to preserve her loving vision of him even at the expense of the overall story’s more complex reality. The series’ portrait of the Peterson union doesn’t square with the defense’s depiction of them as soulmates, but neither does it look like the sham union presented by the prosecution. Not only does the drama show us Kathleen dying by fall, and by brutal beating, but it also depicts the late-stage “owl theory”—that she neither fell nor was beaten but bled out as a result of an owl attack. And so, in addition to the familiar cast of main characters—Michael and Kathleen (Toni Collette), their kids and the legal team—we meet director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon), producer Denis Poncet (Frank Feys), and editor Sophie Brunet (Juliette Binoche), who appears in the first few episodes as an enigmatic woman dressed in white. Kathleen Peterson’s life ended that night in December 2001, but the true crime story that grew out of her absence was just getting started, unfolding mostly as a sensational did-he-or-didn’t he? To that conflict were added some savory plot points guaranteed to stoke public appetite: the couple’s affluence and evidence that Michael Peterson had engaged in sexual encounters with men during their marriage—not to mention the fact he had known another woman who took a fatal tumble, and that he was raising her two children. It’s been more than 20 years since Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the foot of a staircase in the Durham, North Carolina mansion the 48-year-old Nortel executive shared with her husband, novelist Michael Peterson. The circumstances of her death have always been the mystery in need of solving.

The following contains spoilers for The Staircase (2022) finale, “America's Sweetheart or: Time Over Time” (written by Antonio Campos and Aja Gabel, ...

Surely Collette and Firth will receive nominations come award season, but The Staircase (2022)’s greater worth is still subject for debate. The real Jean-Xavier was interested in telling the story of Michael Peterson because he wanted to expose the shortcomings of the American judicial system, but what does The Staircase (2022) want to prove? Originally, the show was praised for its attempt to center Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette) at the center of the story of her death. It’s hard not to think about the Peterson children, who could very well be watching this series in their own homes, forced to relive their mother’s death time and again. The Staircase (2022) is by no means the only sensationalized account of a terrible crime, but it feels like a breaking point. As The Staircase (2022) comes to a close, it seems like as good a time as any to reevaluate our society’s obsession with true crime.

HBO Max's new series “The Staircase” is a dramatic retelling of the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson and the Durham murder trial of her husband, Michael.

He puts out photos of Kathleen all over the apartment — him with Kathleen, Kathleen with the kids — and then sits down on his bed. De Lestrade asks him who he means and he says “the shortstop.” She tells him he’s the one who was always talking about “Paris, Paris, Paris, Paris” and he mutters, exasperated, “Shut up” and she screams at him. She says Martha has a dance recital and Margaret is there with her, the way she should be. De Lestrade turns off the video and Brunet says: “This man, this man is a liar. Clayton calls to make a reservation and the owner gets on the line and says “We don’t seat convicted killers” and hangs up. He calls her controlling, says that she and Kathleen both always tried to control everything. Todd offers to go with him and Michael snaps at him, telling him he’s still able to (use the bathroom) on his own. Kathleen is soaking in the tub and Michael sits beside her and asks what she’s thinking about. In 2011, he allows the hearing to go forward, and this is where we pick up again, on the 10th anniversary of Kathleen’s death. Candace notices Brunet and whispers to Lori: “That’s the girlfriend, poor stupid woman.” Margaret tells her she never said anything to her (about her sexuality) and Martha says: “You never asked, no one ever asked me.

It just wasn't to the question they'd asked. When Michael Peterson (Colin Firth), the dissembling author accused of murdering his wife, Kathleen (Toni Collette) ...

It was a loop: the characters kept coming back to that fateful 2001 night, the audience to the first episode. “It just wasn’t the whole thing.” Was that omission or deceit? The technical rigour of the storytelling was acute. The audience was always aware of how stories were being assembled, told and retold so that they competed for ascendancy. Trying to pin down a truth nearly broke her, as she uncovered confirmation of Michael’s male lovers he’d previously denied, and their dissolution was harsh as she refused to allow him to prevaricate. The triumph of Colin Firth’s performance was his emotional fluidity. Campos’ drama was inspired by the previous Staircase, the ground-breaking true-crime documentary (currently streaming on Netflix). Watching a fictionalised version of it being made – with shots of the crew embedded with Michael and his lawyer, David Rudolf (Michael Stuhlbarg) – added another layer to the narrative. But within the remnants of his family the adult children struggled to stay afloat. This was a deeper, solemn exploration of the true crime genre. An early sequence of the Peterson clan driving in a convoy of cars to a police station had the camera moving from vehicle to vehicle in a seamless shot, turning upside down like the family’s reality. The Staircase built with inexorable dread to three moments: Kathleen’s death in 2001, the judicial decision in 2011 as to whether Michael should get a retrial, and his struggle to accept the Alford plea in 2017. The case had twist after twist, including revelations of Michael’s bisexuality and the lost and then somehow found status of the blow poke, a fireplace tool that had been designated by the prosecution as a murder weapon Michael repeatedly struck Kathleen with.

Both actors were given autopsy photos and trial documents to prep, and they both spoke to Peterson's real defense attorney David Rudolf ahead of shooting.

STUHLBARG It’s funny because with what I remember David saying about how he practices his profession, when he’s in it, he’s in it, and when he’s not, he’s not. MICHAEL STUHLBARG I heard about it when I was in the middle of making another project, and I had worked with Antonio before, on After School. It was a really provocative and interesting piece for its time, and very personal for Antonio. When I heard about The Staircase happening, and he wanted me to be a part of it, I jumped at the opportunity. I have rarely seen two people just absorb so much about each other so well and so thoroughly, and you were both so perfect for those parts. We just loved the charm and the brutality of being able to portray this kind of exhaustion and darkness in their friendship. I remember looking over at Michael and he just looked at me and he gave me a thumbs up, and it just meant so much. So by the time we got to the courtroom scenes — we shot those in five days — I was a bit nervous when I had to do things alone. Antonio gave us this massive stack, two huge envelopes, with autopsy photos and all the papers that the defense would have had during the trial and left it to us to either look at them or not. I was also a fan of the documentary and, oddly, I had seen it a second time even before I knew that we were going to be making a show. Antonio had been in his 20s and he reached out to me and befriended me at some little cocktail party, and we just started talking and he invited me to his first film, After School. I was really impressed at how much of a vision he had as a filmmaker. I just kept listening to Freda’s voice and her accent and got to watch her on Court TV. And that’s when I heard that Michael Stuhlbarg, who’s been a favorite actor of mine since [Martin McDonagh’s play] ThePillowman, was in touch with David Rudolph, the real guy! I would just listen to David’s voice over and over again and just sort through it. I’d heard that Parker and Colin [Firth] and Toni [Collette] were all going to be a part of it.

Peterson is an American novelist who was convicted of killing his wife Kathleen and sentenced to life in prison in 2003, despite maintaining she had died after ...

“Jean should have known that when you sell your a**/property, you assume the risk of getting f***ed/betrayed,” Peterson said. “He released his archive to Campos who then created a fictional account of events,” Peterson said. Peterson is an American novelist who was convicted of killing his wife Kathleen and sentenced to life in prison in 2003, despite maintaining she had died after falling down the stairs.

With the release of episode 8, HBO's drama series based on true crime, "The Staircase," comes to an inconclusive end. This inconclusiveness, though, is not ...

Not through a long-drawn court trial, not through a detailed and praiseworthy documentary series, and definitely not through a fictional dramatic retelling of the incident. On the day of the Alford plea in 2017, none of the four children were present in court or even with their father afterwards. The inclusion of the documentary crew and its various characters in the narrative of the show can be looked at as just following the objective truth of what all happened and who all were present at the time. It is to be remembered that “The Staircase” is not just about the court trial and what happened to Michael, but also about the various interpretations of truth. In 2017, before the Alford plea, Michael calls upon this close friend to seemingly reveal something worrying, something that he had carried within himself for a very long time and was acknowledging for the first time to anybody. Throughout the trial, Michael defended the potential motive presented by Jim Hardin regarding his sexuality, saying that his wife had known all about his experimentations and was in complete support of it. This triggered a pathetic reaction from the father, as he brutally hit Michael for his actions, to the extent of getting the young boy a black eye. Sophie and Michael had planned for a long time to leave Durham and settle together in Paris when the novelist would finally be allowed to live somewhere else. This approval of a retrial is soon celebrated by the whole family, including all of the Peterson children, Michael’s brother Bill, David Rudolf, Michael’s first wife, Patricia, and the newest member introduced to the family, his current lover and ex-editor of the documentary show, Sophie Brunet. The theme of family remains important in this final episode, too, as changing dynamics and relations are stressed on. However, owing to the findings of investigators about the corruption of the SBI only a few months back, the judge turned down such a request and opened the hearing for a retrial of the case. This plea was based on the defense’s understanding that, in the event of a retrial, the jury would once again find Michael guilty of the crime, based on the evidence presented by the prosecution. Now, we get to witness the procedures of this hearing as family from both sides, Michael’s children in support of the defense, and Kathleen’s sisters in support of the prosecution, all gather in court.