Linda Fairstein calls Ava DuVernay's When They See Us an "outright fabrication" in Op-Ed

The Hollywood Reporter

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the former prosecutor of the so-called Central Park Five describes the Netflix series as "so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication." She outlines some of the "most egregious falsehoods," writing: "When They See Us, repeatedly portrays the suspects as being held without food, deprived of their parents’ company and advice, and not even allowed to use the bathroom. If that had been true, surely they would have brought those issues up and prevailed in pretrial hearings on the voluntariness of their statements, as well as in their lawsuit against the city. They didn’t, because it never happened." Fairstein writes that When They See Us omits a riot of 30 people that took place that night in Central Park. She also writes that DuVernay portrays her as a "prosecutor and a bigot, the police as incompetent or worse, and the five suspects as innocent of all charges against them" and claims that "none of this is true." ALSO: Fairstein's Hollywood literary agency drops her amid When They See Us fallout.