The Staircase

Here's everything you need to know about the true story behind HBO Max's The Staircase, which details the tragic death of Kathleen Peterson.

He was released from custody with credit for the seven-plus years he'd already spent behind bars. Days after Kathleen's death on Dec. 9, 2001, Michael was charged with murder. Michael and Kathleen met in 1986. Following the deaths of both George and Elizabeth, Michael became the guardian of their two children. Though authorities initially considered the death accidental, the autopsy report later led investigators to believe that Kathleen died not after a fall but after being attacked. The night before, the two had been celebrating with drinks by the pool after learning that Michael's latest book, a WW II-era tale based on a true story, was being optioned by a Hollywood studio.

There are many levels to "The Staircase," a drama as much about the making of the docuseries chronicling Michael Peterson's murder trial as the salacious ...

There's also the issue of how prosecutors leveraged that information, recognizing how it might play to a jury in 2003. (Netflix, notably, revisited the original 2004 series in 2018 The result is a production that constantly seems to be reassessing what we know, versus what we might think or assume, about what transpired.

How did The Staircase filmmakers' relationship with Michael affect the original 2004 docuseries? HBO Max's adaptation attempts to find out with a meta story ...

“The problem with any subject, as Maggie said, is that once you put on the camera, are you getting the real person?” adds Campos. “Are you getting someone performing? Playing devil’s advocate, Campos counters, “And I would argue that a good documentarian has to get close to a subject, to a certain degree, to get them to open up. Asked whether Campos had conversations about filmmaker-subject distance with de Lestrade, Campos says, “I think that Jean would argue that he was able to maintain his distance enough to know when Michael was putting on a show for the camera and when he felt like he was being more genuine. I got a very small taste of what that’s like to try to keep up that boundary…it’s very difficult, or it was for me.” I mean, I was in a three-hour conversation and I was struggling with it,” says Cohn. “So imagine, over the course of two years, trying to keep that separation and that distance when you’re so intimately connected. The fireplace tool, which mysteriously reappeared after an extensive search, was central to an episode in the original series titled “The Blowpoke Returns.” But Campos said that seeing the uncut footage from that plot twist gave him additional insight into Michael, who is played on the new miniseries by Colin Firth.

The notorious documentary series about the death of an author's wife gets a star-packed fictionalisation that is practically fizzing with tension.

The former is slippery and arrogant, putting in a performance that teeters on so many brinks – deeply loving yet coercive with family, paralysed with grief yet sociopathically detached, self-indulgent yet narcissistic – that you cannot help watching to see if and which way he will fall. As evidence against Michael grows – if not probative of murder, then at least of the fact that he is not quite the man they thought he was – the family begins to fracture. It skates close to becoming disorientating – particularly when Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) and his documentary team turn up to make their film – but the timeline-hopping generally adds to the growing tension. The subsequent investigation revealed a millefeuille of layers to the man, the family and the story. Then we move back again to a few months before, when Michael, Kathleen (Toni Collette) and their children/wards (one from Kathleen’s previous relationship, four from Michael’s) have gathered for a family dinner and college send-off for one of them. He claimed he found her at the foot of the stairs she had fallen down while drunk and cradled her as he called the emergency services and she breathed her last.

Originally a classic true-crime documentary series, the case of Michael Peterson makes for a gripping series.

Much married, he was, at one point, in league with judges and U.S. social security officials, and part of the thrust of the story is the sheer complexity of the government system and the inadequate oversight. Also note the arrival of The Big Conn (streams AppleTV+), a four part docu-series that is, yes, about a scam artist. It opens the story out to present Kathleen (Toni Collette) as a woman weary of nurturing a blended family – her kids and Michael’s – and mentally racked by knowing about her husband’s other life as a bisexual with male lovers. As the trial and then retrial go on and on, the family splinters, with some remaining loyal to Michael and others at first suspicious and then repulsed. The Staircase (HBO, streams Crave) is new, a dramatization of the case. What happened to Peterson on a December night in 2001 has been the focus of much scrutiny.

The HBO Max show, based on the documentary series of the same name, stars Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Toni Collette as his wife Kathleen.

“Over the years, the story just continued to get more and more interesting and complicated,” Campos said of the Peterson murder case. At some point in 2009, while Michael was imprisoned, a new theory of Kathleen's death emerged: she was attacked by an owl from outside that caused her to fall down the stairs and lose consciousness after hitting her head. “This particular retelling of it just balances out the relationship between Kathleen and Michael and gives a voice to someone who really isn’t present in the documentary.” And in 2003, Michael was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. “I hope that viewers actually get a real insight into this intriguing family,” said Turner, who portrays Margaret Ratliff, one of Michael’s adopted daughters. The true crime story was turned into a 2004 popular docuseries, "The Staircase."

HBO Max's The Staircase limited series retells Kathleen Peterson's murder and stars Toni Collette, Colin Firth, Sophie Turner, and more.

For her part, Posey — who plays prosecutor Freda Black — is acting in the style of a Ryan Murphy true-crime drama, doing her version of Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark with a Southern accent and a prurient, homophobic fixation on Michael Peterson’s bisexuality. The Staircase does do a good job of establishing the series’ banal, moneyed late-’90s/early-’00s suburban milieu, although it’s less meticulous when it comes to establishing how Peterson’s wealth and status factored in to his prosecution for murder. The fictionalized Staircase is more about the meta-narrative surrounding the case than the case itself (or, by extension, the people involved). Campos’ version of the story has secured a fantastic, high-profile cast that also features Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, as well as Juliette Binoche, Michael Stuhlbarg, Rosemarie DeWitt, Sophie Turner, and Parker Posey in supporting roles. Given that the documentary version of The Staircase grapples with questions of prejudice and the impossibility of objective truth, this approach is both wholly appropriate and rather clever. Campos pulls off a skillful meta-trick weaving these into his narrative, filming the first few episodes with a bias toward Michael Peterson’s side of the story, then showing why the makers of the documentary might themselves have been biased. The same can’t really be said for the five episodes of The Staircase made available for review: Sure, you’ve got Toni Collette as Kathleen, building on her fearless reputation with dinner-table scenes that can’t help but evoke her famous “I am your mother!” monologue from Hereditary. But in terms of illuminating what made either Peterson tick, Campos’ version of The Staircase is no more forthcoming than Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s original.

HBO Max's 2022 "The Staircase" is a true crime drama based on the documentary of the Kathleen (Toni Collette) and Michael Peterson (Colin Firth) murder ...

There are even heavy-handed winks to the camera to spotlight what one can only describe as "easter eggs" for "fans" of this classic true-crime did-he-dunnit case. While reviewers only received five out of the eight total episodes, it's clear that the infamous "owl theory" will soon come into play too, as evidenced by the abundance of bird imagery and some not-so-subtle lines sprinkled throughout. It's as navel-gazey as this new crop of "elevated" true crime subgenres gets, with a puzzlingly pseudo-intellectual tagline that proclaims "There is No Truth Without Lies." But the HBO Max dramatization feels like the final stage of this tragedy-exploitation machine. Collette uses all her horror-acting chops to really sell us on every painful death rattle in the two different versions of Kathleen's death posited by the homicide investigators and Michael's defense team. HBO Max's The Staircase is like staring into an infinity mirror of true crime.