One of this year’s breakout hits has been HBO’s The Staircase, a retelling of the case against Michael Peterson for murdering his wife, Kathleen Peterson. Originally told in the 2004 documentary feature of the same name, now it has been given the narrative treatment with top-notch performances from a cast led by Toni Collette and Colin Firth.
Showrunner Maggie Cohn was in town to talk about the series at the ATX TV Festival and sat down with the Chronicle to talk about truth, storytelling, and complex relationships.
Austin Chronicle: The Staircase does not advertise itself as true crime, but as based on a documentary. How does that sort of secondary layer away from the original incident change the way the show presents itself?
Maggie Cohn: It’s inspired by the documentary – very much so, because the documentary team actually becomes characters in our story. … The way that they shot their documentary, they shot in a way that they’re not participants in it.
I think what’s interesting about The Staircase and what I think makes it stand out to people and very memorable is that it’s not necessarily about a crime. We don’t know what happened exactly that night. And so it could have been an accident. It might just be a TV show about an accident, but ultimately, it’s also a show about grief and trauma and how that manifests over the years, and also about the idea that this is very much a TV show about storytelling. Using the documentary as a device to show how stories are constructed was one of our objectives, and also to show how stories are constructed in regards to a trial. Like how a defense and the prosecution, they each have their stories.
What’s interesting is that all of these stories are kind of using the same plot points, like the photographs, the blood spatter on the staircase, the events leading up to that night, which you can present to everyone, and everyone’s going to have a different opinion on what those things mean.
AC: Whether it’s in a trial or in religious beliefs, is there something beyond “knowing the truth?”
MC: I think recognizing that we can’t know the truth is kind of the first step, and that is important. And then, going another step further, is the idea that everybody has their own truth and respecting that. I think when it comes to religion, that’s equally important. The way that you see this story and the way that you hear it is as much a reflection of yourself as well, what your experiences are.
By the time we get to episode 7, what we wanted to do was really give the women of The Staircase in episode 7 a bit of closure. We got to fully understand their stories in a way that we’ve never seen before through all the media that’s been generated regarding the tragedy that happened on the staircase. So, I think for us, it’s interesting to be able to do that and then to see how people react to it. That is a truth, but it’s not the truth, if that makes sense.
AC: Looking at the two main characters, first Kathleen [Toni Collette]. We don’t know as much about her, so you’re having to sort of construct it. But what is it that’s being constructed in that kind of main character?
MC: What we wanted to do was to construct a character whose absence would be felt and understood. And so, we would understand why something like this resonates, not only for a family, but for society. We wanted to make her very multifaceted and dimensional and dynamic. But again, she is a bit of a fictionalization.
And I’ve said this before, too, is that she’s imbued with a lot of pieces of myself, and she’s imbued with what the actors bring to it, what Antonio [Campos] brought to it as a director. And so, as a construction, that’s very much what she is. But in our story, we wanted to show a woman whose ending came too soon, and we could feel that loss. In order to do that, she had to be very relatable, and she had to have things happen to her that happen.
Everyone has struggled at work. Everyone has struggled with their families. Everyone has struggled within relationships. And all of that doesn’t necessarily lead to the same ending that she found. But I guess part of it’s like, “Well, how did she get there, and how can we avoid getting there?”
AC: And then with Michael [Colin Firth], we get so many different angles on him as we go, because we have so much time with him, for one thing, but he’s also just a really complex person. I don’t even say that as a compliment. In his case, it’s kind of his downfall, is his complexity.
MC: I think what we were trying to convey is a human. And again, I also see this in myself, so the imbuing myself into the characters isn’t exclusive to Kathleen or female characters, but that he was capable of great love and great hate, and there was that duality in him. And I think when people show that, it does attract people to them, because it’s an interesting thing to see play out. And I think with him, it was always just realizing that he was an anchor for a lot of people, and he did support a lot of people. It doesn’t mean that he couldn’t make mistakes. And I think as much as we put on the page, it is about performance as well. And with Colin, he was able to straddle that duality with such ease that it made it feel very organic and natural and possible. And it wasn’t as though it was a split personality, but that it was just a man that contained multitudes, really.
AC: There’s probably not that many actors that could have done that, right?
MC: No, I don’t think so.
AC: What is this relationship? What do you think about their relationship, even sort of outside of the accident or the tragedy? What does it say about the state of modern relationships?
MC: What I think what was interesting to me was that Michael initially said that Kathleen was aware of his sexuality, the diversity of it, the diversity of his attraction and that part of that was occasional infidelity. And then, it was revealed later that they hadn’t had explicit conversations about that, but that she possibly did know. And I think for me, that happens, and maybe that happens in every relationship, and it’s very relatable.
There’s the part of you that you know, and there’s your partner, and you think you know them, too. And we say this in episode 8, which is, you never fully know anyone. And I think for us, showing this relationship, which was about love and it was about disagreement, and there was conflict, but there was also joy – that felt very real to me. And while there was this somewhat extraordinary … no, very extraordinary event that occurred that night, leading up to it was kind of normal in that it wasn’t perfect, and that’s okay, and that a lot of people can relate to that sort of tension and that because of the time and place it was happening, that they might not have had the conversation tools that we have now to have discussions about sexuality and about the space to explore that. And that is something to celebrate within society, that we are beginning to realize that people’s attraction is far more complicated.
Again, it’s not black and white. In that realization, we’re coming up with ways to talk about it, and that we can have discourse about it, whether it’s in a public space or in a private space. I think the more we can do that, we can avoid turmoil.
AC: So then, the incident itself. One thing that struck me was, I remember back to driver’s ed. I think this is very true. They said, “It isn’t when one driver makes a mistake. It’s when two drivers make a mistake.” So, if you run a red light, that actually might be okay as long as everybody else doesn’t run the red lights. I was thinking about his life, especially, it has complexity and good and bad and all that, but it was kind of on the edge, in a way. He was living with the secret, but then also flaunting it. And then, when this thing happens, if this had happened to really boring, straitlaced people, probably the justice system sort of works out, and that’s not fair, but do you think there’s something to that of just the sort of chaos that was underneath him and their relationship, then sort of made the event and then the trial afterward become a bigger deal than it might have been?
MC: Yeah, I think so. I mean, we have in episode 7, David, our lawyer character, is saying to Michael, “It’s not about whether you’re innocent or guilty. It’s about who you are. It’s about your character. It’s about your lies.” If there’s anything we can know for sure, it’s that there were lies. What that means and what those lies amounted to, we’re uncertain about that. But I think that everyone has a different tolerance for chaos and for living with tension.
And I think Michael Peterson probably has the ability to live with a greater amount of that than the ordinary person. But I think what you were saying about people making mistakes is interesting. Malcolm Gladwell, who hopefully I’m not misrepresenting, he said, “Plane crashes occur, not because of one big mistake, but a series of smaller mistakes that compound upon each other.” And I think that is a way to look at tragedies. And so, I think when we ask ourselves, “What can we do to change a situation?” Maybe just starting smaller and then seeing where that goes, as opposed to just thinking of something holistically.
AC: I just have to ask about David the lawyer [Michael Stuhlbarg]. He’s so good in this. I was thinking about him in Call Me by Your Name in that scene he has at the end, which is one of the most powerful scenes in all of cinema, but the same actor that can do that is also the one who is this grounding presence and this “speak truth to power” force. He will always bring you back, and he doesn’t allow any BS. And in a world of Michael BS-ing everywhere, those two are just fascinating in the same room.
MC: I’m generalizing, but with defense lawyers, it’s important to figure out what your story is, what happened, and that once you settle on what that is, any deviation from that is problematic. And with Michael Peterson, there was a lot of deviations. Does it mean that the story, their story, wasn’t what is the closest resemblance to what happened that night? I don’t know. But what I do know that it kept kind of being attacked. And so, I think for him, it was being a grounding presence saying there’s one way through the storm and it’s straight through. And then Michael Peterson, because he is a storyteller and somewhat of a troubadour, that’s not how the world works for most of us. But when you put those two men together and you have those different kinds of philosophies, they highlight one another in the juxtaposition.
The Staircase is on HBO Max now.
ATX TV Festival, June 2-5. Tickets and info at atxfestival.com.
This article appears in June 10 • 2022.