The Staircase documentarians feel "betrayed" by HBO Max's scripted adaptation

Vanity Fair

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the acclaimed 2004 true-crime documentary series The Staircase, is listed as a co-executive producer on HBO Max's scripted adaptation. He shared footage, notes and tips on an unused video with Antonio Campos, the creator of the scripted The Staircase. Yet while de Lestrade was paid for the HBO Max series, he was hands off with regard to its content. “Because I trust Antonio, I didn’t ask him to read the script. I was respecting his liberty as an author, as a creator, as a filmmaker. And I never asked to watch the episodes before they were shown because I was quite confident,” de Lestrade explains to Vanity Fair. So de Lestrade was surprised that HBO Max's The Staircase portrays him and his team in what he considers a negative and inaccurate light. De Lestrade, who is portrayed by Vincent Vermignon on the series, says he knew that he and his crew would be part of the story. But as Vanity Fair's Julie Miller explains, "HBO Max’s dramatized The Staircase undermines the very documentary it purports to pay tribute to, the filmmakers allege, by suggesting that they purposefully tipped the scales to manipulate audiences." De Lestrade also alleges the HBO Max series inaccurately portrays a relationship one of his editors, Sophie Brunet (played by Juliette Binoche), had with Michael Peterson. “I understand if you dramatize. But when you attack the credibility of my work, that’s really not acceptable to me,” says de Lestrade. “It’s alleged that we cut the documentary series in a way to help Peterson’s appeal, which is not true.” Meanwhile, De Lestrade insists he hasn’t made up his mind about Peterson: “I can’t tell you if he had something to do with the death of Kathleen, because I don’t know.”

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• The Staircase team went to the real-life Peterson home to re-create three exact crime scene replicas
• Patrick Schwarzenegger shares screenshots of tweets of The Staircase viewers shocked that he can act
• The Staircase's portrayal of Kathleen Peterson's death, as portrayed by Toni Collette, has been hard to shake
• Kathleen Peterson's violent death will scar you for life