Michael Peterson The Staircase

Michael Peterson is speaking out against HBO Max's The Staircase and documentary filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who sold director Antonio Campos ...

Peterson also took issue with de Lestrade's complaint that The Staircase implies he and his documentary team hid incriminating footage of Peterson to make him look innocent. Peterson and his daughter, Margaret Ratliff, who is also a documentary filmmaker, are both participants in the film. Peterson claims de Lestrade never told him or his family about the HBO series in advance of its release, a fact de Lestrade disputed but later walked back, saying he doesn't recall. However, Campos allegedly made it clear to de Lestrade that the series would have been made with or without his approval, reminding the filmmaker that Peterson and his case were in the public domain. "There are egregious fabrications and distortions of the truth in the HBO series, well beyond what may be considered 'artistic' license." De Lestrade was paid for allowing Campos to use Peterson's story for the series, and he received a co-executive producer credit on the adaptation.

He continued, “There are egregious fabrications and distortions of the truth in the HBO series, well beyond what may be considered 'artistic' license.” Peterson ...

We are the ones who were betrayed, falsely depicted as fighting among ourselves (which NEVER happened), and with made up story lines that denigrate all of us in the eyes of millions.” “Jean should have known that when you sell your ass/property, you assume the risk of getting fucked/betrayed,” Peterson told Variety. “Every hooker knows this. Peterson, whose murder trial is depicted in both the 2004 Jean-Xavier de Lestrade documentary and this year’s Staircase crime drama, didn’t hold back with his brutal comments.

Colin Firth plays convicted killer Michael Peterson in HBO Max's true crime series "The Staircase." Now the real Peterson weighed in.

“A lot of that came from the transcripts. “We had concurrent timelines, we had the multiple depictions, [as a way of] slowly letting you become, as a viewer, comfortable with the idea that this is just a story and that we can never fully know anything. It is disingenuous and hypocritical for Jean to talk about his integrity being challenged when he sold himself to Campos and showed no integrity or sense of responsibility to us.” The author added, “He released his archive to Campos who then created a fictional account of events, most of which trashed me (which I really don’t care about) and my children — which I really do care about. “Jean should have known that when you sell your ass/property, you assume the risk of getting fucked/betrayed,” Peterson said. “The Staircase” centers on North Carolina-based novelist and would-be politician Michael Peterson, played by Colin Firth, who is accused, convicted, and then cleared of killing his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette), who died bloodily and presumably alone at the foot of their staircase.

We feel that Jean pimped us out,” Peterson said of The Staircase director, ”sold OUR story…for money—what word other than pimped describes what he did?”

“I thought that it would be better to cooperate, and be involved in the process, than to stay totally outside as a stranger,” he said. He released his archive to Campos who then created a fictional account of events, most of which trashed me (which I really don’t care about) and my children—which I really do care about. “But we didn’t sell our story to Campos—were never even consulted or informed that Jean had done this,” continued Peterson. “We are the ones who were betrayed, falsely depicted as fighting among ourselves (which NEVER happened), and with made up story lines that denigrate all of us in the eyes of millions.

The son of subject Michael Peterson claims that parts of the HBO true crime series "The Staircase" get his family completely wrong.

Todd goes on to say in the video that he has no reason to lie about this, because he does not have a good relationship with his father now. He claims that de Lestrade sold out his family by "[selling] OUR story to Campos for money," though de Lestrade says that he received less than $10,000 as a fee. On June 9, Variety published emails sent to the publication by Michael Peterson regarding the HBO show. The HBO series also makes it seem as though Sophie Brunet, the editor played by Juliette Binoche and who eventually became Michael's girlfriend, was corresponding with him as she edited the first eight episodes of the documentary. Though Michael has maintained that he found his second wife Kathleen unconscious at the bottom of a staircase in Durham, North Carolina home, he was convicted of her murder in 2003. The documentarians are characters in the adaptation, and the series shows them debating whether to edit their film to make Michael look more sympathetic. In late May, Vanity Fair published an interview with Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, director of the acclaimed documentary series, and other filmmakers, in which he said that he felt "betrayed" by the drama series' director, Antonio Campos, to whom he'd given access to his archives of footage related to the Peterson case. He had already served enough time to cover the new sentence and has been a free man since then. This occurred because it had been discovered that one of the prosecution's key witnesses, a purported blood spatter expert, had given false testimony and greatly exaggerated his credentials. After Ratliff's death, Patricia and Michael began raising her two daughters, Margaret and Martha. And while Ratliff's cause of death was originally listed as a brain hemorrhage, it was changed to homicide after her body was exhumed and reexamined. One major presence is Todd Peterson, one of Michael's children from his first marriage, who is played by Patrick Schwarzenegger in the HBO show. Across eight episodes, the HBO Max limited series The Staircase dramatizes the true events surrounding the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson. Colin Firth stars as writer Michael Peterson, who is accused and eventually convicted of his wife's murder, though he has always maintained that her death was an accident.

Michael Peterson (subject of the docuseries 'The Staircase' and its HBO Max adaptation of the same name) told 'Variety' that he felt “pimped out” by ...

He was compensated — paid off … I have no sympathy for him, any more than I would for a hooker who contracted an STD after peddling her ass.” Peterson goes on to allege that the documentarian never informed him of the sale of his footage from the docuseries to Campos and that Campos failed to compensate Peterson for the stories he’d lifted from Peterson’s 2019 book, Behind the Staircase. De Lestrade maintained that he’d sold his footage to Campos to protect the story, although he admitted that he entered nary a writer’s room and left total creative freedom to Campos. De Lestrade couldn’t remember if he’d told Peterson about the HBO Max show. And now Peterson, the subject of whole thing, believes he had been “pimped out” by de Lestrade, according to emails he sent to Variety. “We feel that Jean pimped us out — sold OUR story to Campos for money — what word other than pimped describes what he did?” Peterson writes. The first offended party was de Lestrade, who took issue with his depiction and believed that Antonio Campos, the filmmaker behind the new show, “ attacked the credibility” of the original docuseries.