How close is Netflixs Unbelievable to the true story?
*Spoilers for the Netflix mini-series Unbelievable*
Netflix kept suggesting I watch the mini-series Unbelievable but I watched the trailer and assumed I’d seen the whole story. I was wrong. The story is layered, and I’m shocked how they were able to tell it with that degree of complexity. So much information is given in the quiet moments too, the supposedly random conversations.
The show, in very small nutshell, is about an 18-year-old, Marie Adler, who’d been mistreated by the foster system, who was raped in her apartment and filed a police report. Due to how she behaved following her rape and inconsistencies in her multiple retelling of the night in question, her account was deemed false and the case was closed. The city went so far as to charge her for false reporting, for which she paid a fine and took probation. But her life was destroyed. No one trusted her and she could never get out from under her “lie.” Years later, two female detectives (played by Merritt Wever and Toni Colette) discover they are working on rape cases that are eerily similar and band together, which results in arresting the serial rapist. In reviewing their evidence, they came across a photo of Marie and notified the officer that charged her with false reporting. In the end, Marie was exonerated. What I didn’t know until yesterday was that the series is based on a true story. It was first told by The Marshall Project and ProPublica in the article, An Unbelievable Story of Rape. It was told again in the book, A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America and a third time by NPR’s This American Life in Anatomy of Doubt. In those, only the victims’ names were changed, except for Marie’s. In Unbelievable, they changed everyone’s name, except for Marie’s. This is, above all, Marie’s story. Entertainment Weekly interviewed the series showrunner, Susannah Grant, about her decision to stick so closely to the original article.
All throughout the season, from the premiere to the finale, I was surprised to see just how closely you stayed true to the facts of the case and the article. Was there anything you felt you had to change from the real-life case for it to work for TV?
I wouldn’t put it that way – we were very conscious from the get-go about respecting the privacy of everybody involved as much as possible. Ken and T. had changed the names of all the women who were survivors of this rapist, so we went further and changed a lot of identifying features about them because there’s no reason to let this enter their world in a way they don’t want it to. We also decided to change the names of everybody – I didn’t think it compromised our storytelling at all to say this is inspired by true events rather than shine a light on private individuals who made what they think now are very bad mistakes. I just didn’t see the point in rubbing salt in that wound, so we kept privacy across the board. In terms of plot, life is not lived in a narrative structure and the way Netflix drops the show, it’s possible for someone to watch all at once. You think about the viewer having a different experience so you have to keep propulsive storytelling in mind. But we were very true to the facts of the case and to the work those detectives did and the journey Marie went through. It didn’t feel like we had to change much, it was more shaping and pacing and figuring out how to tell the story in a way that made sense in our narrative structure. Creative license wasn’t taken at all. It was such an incredible story that it didn’t need any enhancing.
So what was the most important aspect that you felt you had to get right in bringing this story to life as a series?
I thought the credibility of the story was so important that in order for it to be taken seriously, it needed to be credible. To me, that meant being truthful to the experience of everyone involved. And then also right alongside that was how we depicted sexual violence was really important. There are so many examples of it that end up being exploitative and that feels like nothing I want to do in my work at all, but especially not when you’re talking about the real experiences of real people. In thinking about the subjective way things were written and subsequently shot, that was really important, so your experience of the act is 100 percent with the woman, the victim in the case.
Vulture has a great article about who the characters are based on. The real Marie called Ken Armstrong, one of the co-authors of the original article, and allowed him to tweet out her reaction to Unbelievable. She was very pleased with the series accuracy and depiction of her. Reading that got me emotional, I can only imagine how Susannah felt.
There are so many other angles we can discuss on this series. I hope this gets enough interest to allow me to talk about it again. Honestly, I’m still processing it. The last thing I’ll say today is about Susannah’s comment about, “shin(ing) a light on private individuals who made what they think now are very bad mistakes.” I think it’s pretty obvious this is about the detective who closed Marie’s case. He clearly f–ked up. The series doesn’t try to convince you otherwise. No one lets him off the hook, including himself. But Susannah was kind enough to show the viewers that he did have regret. They didn’t give him a huge redemption arc where all was forgiven, it’s not and that would have been a disservice, but at least he took responsibility, still does, and Susannah acknowledged that. Fortunately, she wasn’t as kind to people like the detective’s partner who never did admit fault in real life and wanted money to talk to the filmmakers while they were writing it.
Photo credit: WENN Photos, Twitter and Instagram
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