You Can’t Make This Up

Unbelievable

Episode Summary

The original series "Unbelievable" follows two policewomen (Toni Collette and Merritt Wever) trying to capture a serial rapist, and one girl (Kaitlyn Dever) who may, or may not, be a victim. It just depends on who you believe. For this episode, we have Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith (hosts of the podcast Believed) speaking with writer/director Susannah Grant and Executive Producer Sarah Templeton about how they adapted the true story into a series, and what steps can be taken to take these crimes more seriously (See "An Epidemic of Disbelief" in The Atlantic).

Episode Notes

The original series "Unbelievable" follows two policewomen (Toni Collette and Merritt Wever) trying to capture a serial rapist, and one girl (Kaitlyn Dever) who may, or may not, be a victim. It just depends on who you believe. For this episode, we have Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith (hosts of the podcast Believed) speaking with writer/director Susannah Grant and Executive Producer Sarah Templeton about how they adapted the true story into a series, and what steps can be taken to take these crimes more seriously (See "An Epidemic of Disbelief" in The Atlantic).

Episode Transcription

YCMTU_Unbelievable_FINAL.mp3


 

Rae [00:00:00] Welcome to You Can't Make This Up. A companion podcast from Netflix.


 

Rae [00:00:06] I'm Rae Votta and I'm hosting this week's episode. Here on You Can't Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix original true crime stories with special guests. This month, we're focusing on a scripted, limited series that's based on a very real crime. Unbelievable follows to detectives played by Merritt Wever and Toni Collette as they try to catch a serial rapist. Meanwhile, a young woman has been sexually assaulted, but both the police and her family and friends question her truth. This story was originally published as a ProPublica article by T. Christian Miller and the Marshall Project's Ken Armstrong. The series was adapted by Susannah Grant, Michael Chabon, and Ayelet Waldman. For this episode, we have Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith, reporters at Michigan Radio and host of the podcast Believed. Their show follows the case of Larry Nassar, an Olympic gymnastics doctor who got away with abusing hundreds of women and girls for decades. They'll be speaking with the Unbelievable writer and showrunner Susannah Grant and executive producer Sarah Timberman. Here's Kate and Lindsey.


 

Kate [00:01:10] Hey, I'm Kate Wells.


 

Lindsey [00:01:11] I'm Lindsey Smith.


 

Kate [00:01:12] We are the reporters behind Michigan Radio and NPR's podcast called Believed. It investigates how Larry Nassar was able to sexually abuse so many women and girls over the course of 20 years and why so many of them were not believed. And we are here to talk about the new limited series Unbelievable. It's based on true story of a young woman who reports a rape and then under pressure from police and the people in her life says she made it up. And then detectives in other states catch her rapist, a serial offender. And we are getting here to talk with Sarah Timberman, the executive producer. You know her from previous shows like Elementary, Masters of Sex, my personal favorite Justified, which Sarah, like, ruined all of human men for me for the rest of my life. So thank you for that. With the character Raylan Givens, no one has ever been able live up to that. And we also got Susannah Grant. She is a showrunner and director, longtime screenwriter. You also know her work from Erin Brockovich, Catch and Release. So, Susannah and Sarah, just sort of start me off with when you came across this piece, because it's based on a true story first published by ProPublica and the Marshall Project. How were you first introduced to this story?


 

Susannah [00:02:25] You know, this is Susannah. I came across the story. And to be honest, I can't remember who put it in front of me or if I came across it myself in my own reporting of it. But I read it and immediately thought this was a story that would really benefit from a narrative treatment of it. And I sent it to Sarah, with whom I worked a number of times before. And, you know, she obviously is, given her credits, just a fantastic producer of really quality material and said, let's do this together. And she said, you know, she actually had coincidentally received it from Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon, who had said the same thing. And so we all drove in together and did it as a team.


 

Sarah [00:03:07] And we weren't the - this is Sarah - we weren't the only ones. There were a lot of people interested in the story. Also, Katie Couric among them, who shared some representatives with us. And they said maybe you guys want to jump in on this together. So Suzannah and Ayelet and Michael and Katie and I all pursued this together. We all just had, you know, shared the same feeling that this is a story that needed to be told. I think we were all just so moved by the story and felt the urgency of it. And were so impressed by the quality of Ken and T's reporting and their writing. You know, it just felt like it was a story that needed to be told.


 

Susannah [00:03:49] Yeah, I had a very visceral response to it. I tend not to think too hard about when something says to me, oh, this is, this is an avenue you want to walk. You want to run down. And this was one, I was so moved by the characters. There's the character of Marie, who is a young woman who's been through the foster care system and has had a difficult time of life in her first 18 years and is presented with an incredibly difficult situation. And her determination to not let it bury her was just something I found so moving. And then the, the two detectives in Colorado who doggedly pursued this case and really went so far above and beyond the job description to apprehend this guy. I also was really impressed with and I thought I can, I can spend a couple of years writing these characters and bringing them to the screen. That's, that's time well spent. And then there's the larger issue, which is such a huge cultural issue. And, you know, it is work making a show. And if you're getting up at 4:00 in the morning, you want to be sure that it's for something worthwhile. And this really felt like it was for something extremely worthwhile. And if we can magnify the attention paid to this issue, that's great. You know? And the reach of Netflix, you know, they're in 190 countries. So the idea of being able to tell this story, it had been so well told by ProPublica and the Marshall Project. And then again, This American Life had done an episode on it, also did a really spectacular job. But to be able to take advantage of the reach that Netflix has, the gold global reach was pretty irresistible.


 

Sarah [00:05:29] And I can say back to Susannah's point about 4:00 a.m., you know, as a producer, you wake up in 4:00 a.m. and wonder and worry with a story like this, whether it's in the, you know, hands that you can trust to tell it, you know, with integrity and compassion. And I you can look at Susannah's track record as a storyteller. I feel like there is no better showrunner to have taken on this story because I can say it about her, but she comes at things with so much sort of compassion and thoughtfulness. And, you know, it's, it's a daunting thing when you tell a story involving people who are all walking around out there and try to approach it with fairness and sensitivity, and I think, you know, Susannah just did an extraordinary job bringing this story together because it's, it's - you have to take the responsibility very seriously.


 

Kate [00:06:25] It's tough. Yeah. And that, I think, is kind of the pitfall of like anytime you want to take on sort of what we generally think of as, like, the true crime genre, right? And when you're trying to do it exactly like you said, you don't want this to be, you know, somebodies pain and trauma used to just create entertainment. You don't want it to be just titillating. And for, for us, I think we had so many questions and thoughts about, especially this first episode. When you kind of go into this first episode, you enter right off the bat. You mention Marie. We meet her. I think she's, she's supposed be like 18, 19 in this?


 

Susannah [00:07:01] She's eigh-, she's 18 at the beginning of it, yes.


 

Kate [00:07:03] Eighteen. And she's sitting there, I think, wrapped in a blanket right in the aftermath of this rape, waiting for police to arrive in this bare bones apartment with her foster mom. And as she starts answering the police questions, we flashed back and forth between her in this room, answering questions and also throughout the entire first episode, very visceral memories of the rape itself. And I know that for Lindsey and I, this is something we talked about a lot in Believed is is how you navigate that. Right? Because you want it to be visceral and powerful, but you also want it to be not just, you know, gratuitous. I can imagine that it became, like, very specific questions of do we need that shot? Do we need that shot? Talk to me a little bit about the decisions that were made there and what you wanted to come across.


 

Susannah [00:07:54] Yeah. You know, it was it was something I had a very strong, visceral reaction to the notion - I had never written a scene of sexual violence before. And when I sat down to write the first scene, I just knew completely intuitively that it could not be shot from an objective viewpoint. You know? I just thought no matter how well we do it, if we are outside of this experience, it's going to run up against the profusion of both hard and, you know, soft rape porn that permeates our society, you know? And it can't. It can't do that. And there were a couple of things that were really important to communicate. One was the experience for that character. How do you, how do you communicate to an audience what the experience of an assault like that is for that character? And the second thing that was important to point out and is sort of a key to the whole series is the nature of memory after trauma, which is different than memory for those of us walking around day to day, not, not traumatized. The brain does really interesting and protective things. You know, memories get shattered and they get out of sequence and they become unreliable by conventional standards. And so Marie's telling of her story, it, it's not linear and it doesn't all lay out in perfect "this, then this, then this" form. And some details are contradictory and that's completely consistent with what the brain does in the wake of a trauma. And that's something that - it varies department by department across the country in terms of law enforcement, their knowledge of that and their sensitivity to that. You know, there's some cities that are really up to speed on how to handle and question the victim of a traumatic attack like this. And there are some that just don't get it at all. So it was important to show both of those things. So the idea of showing very selective images from the rape and showing them completely from her perspective became, like, it felt like a really good solution to the challenges.


 

Sarah [00:10:21] And I think all of that was in the script that Susannah wrote for the first one and the subsequent ones. But Lisa Cholodenko, you know, really executed it beautifully. I think that her concerns were our concerns. And I think, you know, you have to be really - make your actors with this kind of material feel very secure. And everyone needs to feel sort of heard and safe. And you have to be communicating really well with your cast. And these are hard scenes to shoot. And I think, Lisa, I think she brings like an extraordinary degree of emotional intelligence to her filmmaking. And that was really important to this, too. There's kind of, you know, real emotional honesty in this piece and I think that's sort of a hallmark of her work.


 

Lindsey [00:11:11] You know, you talk about there not being a way to shoot that kind of a scene like in an objective way. But then we go into the hospital, which was also very cringe-worthy for me, like just that process, the the rape kit at the hospital. It's like, it's like, you're almost still walking that line of not overdoing it or hitting the hammer or like hitting people over the head with a ham- a hammer about it, but that this is so hard and so difficult. I mean, there are some parts about, like I think I know about this stuff, but there were still some details in that that I just found so excruciating.


 

Kate [00:11:49] Your morning after pill.


 

Lindsey [00:11:50] Yeah.


 

Kate [00:11:51] Yeah. We really admired how well this - one of the benefits of being able to do this, you know, in this series in the narrative form the way you guys did is that you really took us through the process almost what felt like in real time, although obviously was condensed of what it is like when you then report everything and how exhausting and monotonous and debilitating it is. You guys spent a lot of time on that. Tell me why that was so important.


 

Susannah [00:12:17] Well, you know, one of the things you hear and you hear so much that I, I almost feel like it either loses its meaning or...or maybe was never really fully understood is how on the investigation of a rape to the victim often feels like a second assault. And people say it. And I thought, well, let's let's really show why that is true. I had not been through that experience myself. So I sat down and got really educated on what happens. And, you know, once you learn what the details are, you understand what that means on a more...a level that gives it an emotional truth that I think gets, gets lost or maybe doesn't, doesn't ever land in the first place. So it was really important to show that. When people say that, they really mean it. It's not - it's not just talk. And, you know, interestingly, I feel like one of the things that feels hardest is how many times she has to retell the story. And it's it's not a physical, it's not, you know, part of the exam. It's not taking samples.


 

Kate [00:13:23] But she relives it every time.


 

Susannah [00:13:24] She relives it every time. And there's no reason she should have to say it five times.


 

Sarah [00:13:30] When we, when we screened the first episode at 51 Fest in New York and it was the first time we saw an audience experience it, there was just an audible gasp when one of the detectives puts down the pen and says, could you just write it down now? And, you know, I think what we learned in making it for those of us who haven't been through this experience is that even under the best of circumstances, it can be such an unavoidably dehumanizing process. You know, even when it's - you have skilled and trained detectives, even when you have conscientious medical professionals, the fact that a victim's body is treated like a crime scene, you know, and what that's like. You know, these are things that I think people don't understand. And then back to Susannah's point about the nature of trauma and memory and the fact that I think I read somewhere that I think in Ken and T's book that rape victims, that the way memory functions after trauma for a rape victim is like trying to put together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and missing some of the pieces. You know, you - in a crisis, you sort of can fixate on one moment or, you know, something in a sort of act of self-preservation, and many things get blocked out. And as much as we all know this, I think on a broader societal level, people don't. They don't, you know, they don't understand that that's what happens. I mean, I think we've heard it in...in recent times and things like, you know, whatever you think of happened in terms of those hearings with Brett Kavanaugh and whatever you think took place, it was so disturbing is where you're in the middle of, I think of post-production on this, to hear people say, well, why could she not remember how she got home? And then we were reading all this material and making the show. And it's like absolutely understandable that someone might not remember how they got home in the wake of extreme trauma. So I think it's, you know, making it was an education for us, too.


 

Kate [00:15:39] One thing, though, that you mentioned, that police detective and there's also the character of the foster mom, Judith, who sort of first begins to sort of articulate some doubts in the Lynwood police detective. It would have been really easy to set them up as kind of monsters or, like, really callous characters. But you're very clear in your depiction that even though you're indicting what they're doing, you're clear that all of their mistakes are coming in their minds from the best of intentions, that they think that they are acting out of gentleness and compassion and that their frustrations are coming from understandable places. Talk to us about the way you wanted to depict those characters in particular. The ones who doubted.


 

Lindsey [00:16:23] And we want to know, too, if you talked to them.


 

Kate [00:16:26] Yeah. The actual individuals.


 

Lindsey [00:16:28] Yeah.


 

Susannah [00:16:29] Those two individuals we did not talk to. You know, we had the benefit of Ken and T having done tremendous reporting for their article and then and then further reporting for their book. So there was a trove of material. The other thing was that we - the characters are inspired by real characters. And the...the actions taken are consistent with the actions taken in the real case. But we've taken some liberty, really, to protect the privacy of the people involved. But in terms of of the portrayal of those characters, you know, what this is, is a cultural issue. It's not a couple of really bad actors out in our society. If we just get rid of them, we'll be fine. It's a cultural issue that every single one of us plays into to one degree or another. So it was it felt really important to me to show that people with the best of intentions and good hearts can, by, by going along with the assumptions that are made within law enforcement, within our culture about what the victims should look like and should act like, can make horrible, disastrous mistakes. And I just thought it was - it's a lot more powerful for a viewer to be watching this and say, yeah, I could see myself making those same assumptions and then possibly looking at the understandings that that they themselves hold about these issues. And...because if you just have a villain who is nefarious making these mistakes or are bad calls, it's distancing from the viewer. And the truth is, I would like to implicate all of us in this. You know? I'd like all of us to look at ourselves and look at the assumptions we make and, and, and make some changes because it's not going to change otherwise, you know?


 

Clip 1 Elizabeth Marvel [00:18:22] So anyway, yesterday morning she called and told me what happened.


 

Clip 1 Eric Lange [00:18:26] The rape?


 

Clip 1 Elizabeth Marvel [00:18:26] Yes. And I was just horrified. Angry, upset, worried. All of it. I went straight over there right away. And the whole thing just felt...ff?


 

Clip 1 Eric Lange [00:18:42] Are you saying you think Marie made up the attack?


 

Clip 1 Elizabeth Marvel [00:18:48] I am not drawing any conclusions. I just...I woke up this morning with all this stuff spinning around in my head and I thought you guys should have the whole picture, the context.


 

Kate [00:19:06] Another thing that is so powerful about that first episode is you see the impact that it has on, on Marie of not being believed. And they're sort of the emotions that like we all think we would have, a sort of you're heartbroken, you're upset, you're devastated. But then you also start seeing how quickly somebody can go to just needing this nightmare to end. It is - Lindsey and I were talking about this beforehand, how hard that portion of the episode was to even watch.


 

Lindsey [00:19:33] Yeah.


 

Kate [00:19:34] You just wanted it to be over.


 

Lindsey [00:19:35] Oh my God.


 

Kate [00:19:36] Yeah. And I was telling Lindsey that, you know, I think because of our reporting previously that like, I have no righteous judgments about this. I, like, really get it. But I didn't even - this total, this episode totally wiped away this judgment I didn't even know that I had. Which is that, like, well, but I would never recant...


 

Lindsey [00:19:54] Right.


 

Kate [00:19:54] ...a rape. I would never, just like we all think we'd never give a false confession. I would never say it didn't happen. And you really feel in this, like, you just want it to end.


 

Lindsey [00:20:05] Be done.


 

Kate [00:20:05] And you will do whatever the heck it takes to make that happen. Obviously, that is what you wanted people to feel. How did you go about doing that?


 

Sarah [00:20:16] Ken and T really laid the groundwork because they - you know, their reporting of this was so strong and there was so much detail that just the facts of what happened in this case are so compelling. You know, that's, that's what Marie went through.


 

Susannah [00:20:32] You just, you, you go, go into it with everybody sharing the same foundational understandings of what you're trying to create. And if you have talented and, and people working with integrity, sometimes it works out the right way.


 

Kate [00:20:48] I have one last question, then I want to just hand it over to Linds here. So one of the things that really stuck out to me then about that second episode compared with the first episode, because in the first episode we see this case go horribly wrong. And then in the second episode, it's very much set up as sort of the polar opposite of that. Another rape has happened. But here is how things can go well. And here is how, like the polar opposite of how a detective could handle this case. One of the things that happened in the Nassar case is that it was a female detective and a female prosecutor eventually who cracked the case. And a lot of what they get asked or what we get asked about it is sort of like, well, is it because they were women? Yeah. Like, was there some sort of like magic about just like their female empathy, et cetera, et cetera? And you this is very clear about showing that it's not just about being a woman and having empathy. It is about really good investigative police work. And that informed understanding.l What, what did you want people to take away about watching the detective in the second episode work?


 

Sarah [00:21:56] I'm glad you said that. It's not completely gender specific. I mean, the truth of it is those detectives in Colorado had so much more experience in investigating sexual assault than the ones in Washington. I think this was maybe his second or third sexual assault. He had, he had just come over from narcotics, the one in Washington, and didn't have the training and experience that they had. So training and experience definitely trumps gender, I think.


 

Lindsey [00:22:23] So we eventually get to meet Detective Grace Rasmussen and that is the character in the series. How did you go about merging the real life personalities and experience of these detectives and sergeants? And like, what did you add? What did you want to...make to make this work, to make it, to make the characters kind of blend in the way that they did? Because they kind of had this mentor relationship. And I'm...you know, it's it's an effect that I'm not sure I read in the original ProPublica piece. And it's just something that struck me.


 

Susannah [00:23:00] We, we didn't - again, as I said before, we didn't want to invade these people's privacy and have their, you know, private lives broadcast to 190 countries. That wasn't what they signed on for when they took on this case as, as detectives. And so with their blessing, we did a fair amount of fictionalization. But the core elements of their characters, I tried to hold onto as sort of bedrock principles for both characters. And then from those built a relationship between them and personal lives that supported the story we were trying to tell. But those are those are some dramatic license in in service of the story we're trying to tell.


 

Lindsey [00:23:49] Was there anything in particular that when you watch the series now that you really feel like you guys executed in a way that you exactly like, you just really nailed it or any kind of like really standout moments for you in this series? Like if you could only have people watching one particular episode, right, like, or...


 

Sarah [00:24:10] That's too hard.


 

Susannah [00:24:11] No, they've gotta watch all eight.


 

Sarah [00:24:13] I think, you know, our our three leads executed every moment of this thing exactly as we'd, you know, better than we could have even hoped for. You know, I think that we just had three extraordinary women.


 

Susannah [00:24:28] And an amazing supporting cast.


 

Sarah [00:24:30] Amazing supporting cast.


 

Susannah [00:24:32] I tell you, though, you know, there's one moment at the end, at the very end, after the after the detectives have finally caught this guy, and there's a scene with Toni, and - did you, did you watch the whole thing?


 

Lindsey [00:24:44] I did.


 

Susannah [00:24:44] OK. So there's a scene with Toni and her husband in the car when she's finally gotten the guy. And it wasn't something she and I had talked about. I had thought a lot about the sacrificial nature of the work that these people take on and the costs, the personal cost that it can impose on a life. And there's just a moment at the end of that scene at which you, you feel this really tough character finally show how much it costs her to do her job as well as she does it. And...and I just, it surprised me in the moment. And it was so brilliant and moving. And so that's that's one that stands out. But it's certainly not the only one in this show.


 

Sarah [00:25:27] There is also a scene...I think, I'm trying to remember which episode it's in. It's in the middle and it's the scene in the, in the truck outside his home where it's Toni Collette and Merritt Weaver in the front seat of a car for, I think, seven minutes. And our director, Michael Dinner, who did a fantastic job with the middle chunk of this series. He is not a fan of scenes that run longer than three and a half or four minutes. And he was...


 

Susannah [00:25:58] And certainly not just sitting in a car.


 

Sarah [00:25:59] And he's a grouser. He's a, he's a sort of delightful grouser. And he groused a lot about shooting a seven-minute scene of two people talking in a car. And it was, it was a beautifully written scene. And it was so just completely captivating to listen to - you have a moment where these two women who've been so much about the job that they're doing, you know, let their guards down with each other and just connect about their lives and their actual brush with each other in the past and it -it was an extraordinary scene.


 

Clip 2 Merritt Wever [00:26:36] What do you think he's doing in there?


 

Clip 2 Toni Collete [00:26:39] Probably something really boring. That's the thing I was most tricked by when I worked undercover. How fucking boring these guys are. When they're not out dealing drugs and assaulting people, they're sitting around doing nothing.


 

Clip 2 Merritt Wever [00:26:50] You know, we met them.


 

Clip 2 Toni Collete [00:26:54] Who, you and me?


 

Clip 2 Merritt Wever [00:26:55] I mean, kind of.


 

Sarah [00:26:57] I mean, with Toni and Merritt, every scene is an extraordinary scene. But it was so lovely. And Michael, in editing, I think he had gone in planning to just chop away that scene. And he was like, I can't find anything to cut. There's just, there's nothing to cut. I think that, that the way that Susannah allowed that relationship between the two women in Colorado, our two detectives, to just evolve very organically over the course of the piece is a really lovely thing. And it was a whole other dimension to the show that I don't think, you know, we focused on so much when Susannah was writing. I mean, it was always there. But I think it was brought to life so beautifully by Toni and Merritt. You know, it...it was when they part ways at the end of it, I was like a little bit of a gut punch. You know, these two women had forged such an odd friendship, really unsentimental friendship and partnership over the course of this thing. And when they go their separate ways at the end, it's incredibly moving, you know, what they've been through together. So anyway, that scene, was a sort of a great revelation.


 

Susannah [00:28:06] Yeah, it's worth, it's worth pointing out that there are very few places where you could show 'em a script that's got a seven-minute scene of two people sitting in a car and the executive, executives would say, hey, looks great, no notes, which is what they said about that script. I can't think of any place but Netflix that would react to that scene. You know how many times I've shown someone a script that we're about to shoot and had them say, oh, it feels like a lot of talk. It feels awful long. You want to cut that? Not - that just doesn't happen at all there. They give you tremendous creative freedom and fantastic support. So...


 

Sarah [00:28:40] I just like Michael thinking he was going to go at it with a big pair of scissors and was like, there's nothing to cut. That's a really good scene.


 

Lindsey [00:28:46] In that la- I feel like that whole final episode, at least, I was, almost felt like a movie and it could have ended the episode before and I thought, oh, here's the other episode cued up. The whole episode is like swimming in resolution. That's what, how I've thought about it. You know, you get to see just sort of redemption in a lot of ways. And one thing I ached for was, you know, she has this really good scene where Marie is talking to the detective and gets this apology, finally, really demands this apology and sort of takes back that power. I just so desperately wanted to see the same from this, the stepmoms.


 

Susannah [00:29:29] Foster moms.


 

Lindsey [00:29:31] Yeah, the foster moms. Yes, correct. Right? Like it was like, oh, I didn't need this. And then once I started seeing all this resolution, I was like, give me more. Give me more.


 

Sarah [00:29:41] Well, that's interesting to hear. You know, that one - it's obviously something we talked about. And, and, again, there's only so much resolution one person, one can...one can show. But, but the truth of it is we also wanted to show that this was two years later and this was Marie who, who was really living life alone at this point. And so a lot of, a lot of that decision to not show that was to show that she was at a different stage of life. And there's something we talk to Kaitlyn about a lot, or I did in directing those. How do you show that that time has gone by and that those two years and I, I think she's incredible, how you can see the two years in her when you, when you meet her at the beginning of that next episode.


 

Lindsey [00:30:34] Oh, yeah. When she gives that shot of the her at the DMV with her hair in a ponytail. I mean she looks like a totally different person.


 

Sarah [00:30:44] Yeah. Yeah. She's really remarkable.


 

Lindsey [00:30:46] And that's something that's really nice for this medium to be able to do, I think. Like just in re-, in that in that reflection. Right? Of just her looking like a confident person, that you pick that up right away.


 

Sarah [00:30:57] It's like the sun came back out in that scene. She, she...Kaitlyn is just...you know, she is just magnificent in this whole thing. You know, it's a...


 

Kate [00:31:07] Well, and it was what a role is clearly important throughout this, that even if we didn't meet victims for as long as we met them, like with Marie, that you wanted these people to be people and not just - you, and you wanted them to have moments of, like, having happiness. You know, even in the in the second episode, you, you feel very much in some way that although something terrible and traumatic has happened to the second victim, that in some ways you think she is going to be OK. And I know that that's a delicate balance, too. That you don't want somebody to be like a one-note victim and you also want to show the whole person. I'm sure that that influenced a lot of decisions throughout the series. Talk to me about those decisions when you were meeting victims that we, or depicting victims that we don't stay with as long as we stay with Marie.


 

Susannah [00:31:55] Well, there are a couple of things we wanted to show. Obviously, in the second episode, we wanted to show how the process that Marie had gone through, what that would look like if it's done by a really responsible and sensitive detective and how it's different. So that was important. And then - and also, you know, everybody is different. Every, everybody...you can't say this is the one way that people respond to a rape. And so it was important to show that the effects of this on the victims were as varied as the victims themselves, you know? And so...so then, you know, you just have to have a real character with real, you know, flesh and blood and, and, and emotions and a life and fill it, you know, as much as you can. And then we also have an episode a little bit further in. We sat around when we were all working on - I had, we had a great team of writers working on this. And we all agreed that it was really important to show that the reactions to this evolve, you know, and that there are aftershocks, there are ripple effects that may not bear any resemblance to the initial response. So there's an episode later on in which you see how...how these characters are, are, you know, moving through this and the different ways in which the trauma is sort of appearing later as they get further and further away from the initial assault. So, you know, you go in with those intentions and then just fill it as much as you can with, with what feels like real life.


 

Lindsey [00:33:37] So for both, you know, Unbelievable and our project about the Larry Nassar case Believed, you know, you're talking about serial predators. And how they kind of...in some ways you can see how these patterns sort of develop. There's this notion in this series about this handbook, right, the, the textbook that she finds. You know, I don't know if, if you guys can speak from this place, you're - I'm not saying you're experts on the topic, but based on that, what kind of patterns do you see and sort of take home with you? I mean, in shorter words, how, how can we...how can we learn from this and in really practical ways?


 

Susannah [00:34:23] Well, one thing that we discovered in research. And then there's, there's just a great cover story in the Atlantic this month that addresses this, and there's also been some other interesting reporting on it, is that the lack of communication between police departments and the lack of digestion of data and processing of of data, it just leaves law enforcements at such a loss. You know, there are, there's a, there's a, there were some studies done in Cleveland recently that showed a huge percentage of rapists - of rapes actually turned out to be serial, performed by serial rapists. You know, once they collated the data and and really looked at what they had at their disposal and, and brought in data from different police stations and put them all together, they realized, oh, we actually have a few serial rapists. These aren't one-offs. And that serialists are far more common than we realized. So that's something that's been made really clear to us.


 

Sarah [00:35:29] What's also striking and upsetting in the Atlantic article, which is just a great thing to read, is how much kind of apathy or even resistance there is to, to process all those rape kits that the federal government started offering grants, I think, to process shelved rape kits that are, you know, number in the thousands in lots of states. And when they started to process some of them in several states, all kinds of things were learned, as Susannah said, that the number of serial rapists that people hadn't realized are out there is, was a revelation. Also certain preconceptions about, you know, the difference between acquaintance rapists and rapists who attack strangers, that in fact, there's a lot of crossover between those two and that wasn't previously known. So it - when you step back from it, it's a broader cultural conversation about this crime and why victims are doubted and why some police departments are more diligent in pursuing these cases than others. And it you know, it feels like we're in the middle of a...what we hope will be a very productive societal upheaval surrounding this crime.


 

Susannah [00:36:54] I mean, it's, it is, it's just staggering how many DNA samples are sitting on shelves all across this country that just need to be processed. And I mean, what fo-for a long time, I went along with the belief that just people don't believe women. But the more and more time I spent on it, I thought, no. They just don't care. If they cared, they would process these kits. If they cared, they would investigate these crimes. And they don't care. So the idea of being able to do a series that will hopefully move people to, to look at and feel what it is they are not caring about and maybe start caring seemed like a good opportunity.


 

Lindsey [00:37:39] Well, I think, too, I mean that's great, right?


 

Susannah [00:37:42] Yeah.


 

Lindsey [00:37:42] Let's hope...also, I think, like, just when you're talking about, you know, sort of the apathy and I remember, there's a scene I think it's in like the...the...the last episode again, or maybe it's the second-to-last episode where Rasmussen is calling the guy, I think Detective Parker, and is saying, no, I have pictures. And she sends it to him. And like that it takes some kind of physical evidence like that, like brutal pictures. Right? And that's what it takes to get - it's almost like a there's a terminology for it, like once you believe something, it's really hard to go back.


 

Kate [00:38:24] Confirmation bias.


 

Lindsey [00:38:25] Confirmation bias. Thank you, Kate. I feel like all of this has got to be kind of wrapped up in why these investigations are so tough, or at least I want to think that that's part of it, that they not just don't care. But then when you have, you know, that sort of, it was just a very striking scene that it was like, that's what it took. Was actual physical evidence.


 

Sarah [00:38:47] Right.


 

Susannah [00:38:48] Right. Something completely undeniable.


 

Kate [00:38:50] Well, and I think that's part of the power of this series. And I think a little bit of what we tried to do with Believed is that you don't just make it, it's simply like "believe women" and, like, have that be the end of it. That is that you really try to show so what does that mean in real life? Well, it means investigations. Well, it means testing. Well, it means police work, et cetera. All of the mundane stuff that we don't typically see. And that's what you spend the majority of the series doing is trying to show what that looks like and why that's important. So that's a, that's a powerful depiction there. Thank you guys so much for this time. We really appreciate. It's a pleasure getting to talk with you and really looking forward to everybody being able to see this series.


 

Susannah [00:39:31] Thank you very much.


 

Sarah [00:39:32] And thanks for making the piece, making your piece. I'm excited to go listen.


 

Rae [00:39:38] That was Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith of Michigan Radio and Susannah Grant and Sarah Timberman of the new Netflix Limited series Unbelievable. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. We'll be back next month with a new true crime film series for you to add to your watch list. You can find this show on Apple podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review the show. If you do, it helps other people find us. You Can't Make This Up is a production of Pineapple Street Media and Netflix. Our music is by Hansdale Hsu. I'm Rae Votta, and I'll see you next time.