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Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter to Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom Murdered.
(Its fourth episode, which was written by Dean, airs this Wednesday.)
Its a killer combination.
But its the end result that really sinks its sugar-rotted teeth into you.
Michelle, this is your first television project, and its in the very crowded field of true crime.
Michelle Dean: In the run-up, I didnt expect the article to be optioned.
I didnt have a TV agent or a film agent.
I was just sort of operating as Cultural Critic Number 17.
When this went super-viral, I started to get the Hollywood calls.
Thats the shorthand I use.
He also traffics in that kind of work, and obviously hes an experienced showrunner.
That pairing led us to what I think is an idiosyncratic true-crime show.
Nick, your most recent project,Channel Zero, was a horror show.
So isChucky, theChilds Playseries youre working on with creator Don Mancini.
How much of that did you carry over into doing a show based on a true story?
I find myself trying to capture an atmosphere that feels at home in the horror genre.
I dont think ofThe Actas something radically different fromChannel Zero.
Antosca: Yeah, that pink house is the key image of the show.
In both cases, Im interested in the characters.
And I think we all approachedThe Actas a hybrid.
Its a coming-of-age story.
Its a character study.
And at the same time, its a psychological horror story.
Antosca: I mean, sheinterviewedGypsy.
She interviewed her family.
She interviewed everybody she could talk to.
She did a year of research.
She has a thousand pages of medical records, court transcripts, all that stuff.
Shes an expert on the case, and that was incredibly useful in collaborating.
Dean: That was deliberate.
I sold the show to producers who really did want me involved.
The double meaning took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out, by the way.
Dean: People are divided.
But yeah, Im incredibly lucky to have been allowed to participate.
It had to do with having partners who cared about having my participation happen at a high level.
Without trying to sound too self-serving, I think its something Hollywood should experiment with more.
That we were conceiving of it creatively together was an actual strength.
Both Nick and I were never really that interested in making just a straight murder show.
That was never of much interest to us.
Im curious about how we got there, and Im curious about where we go.
And the show reflects that curiosity.
How much of that didyoucarry over into the show?
I really do care about the medium.
That HBO renaissance stuff is some of my favorite arteverproduced.
We ended up with this big machine of a show that had all of these ingredients and collaborators.
We had a lot of young filmmakers contributing to the voice of the show.
The majority of our episodes are directed by women.
Our writers room is majority women.
Those things helped build the show out into what it is.
Dean: It has a slightly different feel.
Intimate is the word I often hear, like, around our world of executives.
It was a very conscious choice, in part because of the nature of the story.
Antosca: We took it from real life.
Its two women, in a house, for many years thats the core of the story.
It was important to have a mother-daughter counterpart to the Dee Dee and Gypsy story.
And also, some things about the tropes of good mothers that trapped Dee Dee.
Gypsy is such a complicated character.
Shes deceiving the world along with her mom, but shes deceiving herself too.
She had access to countless drugs, so she could have poisoned her mom.
Or she could have stabbed her herself.
But she couldnt do it, because she loved her mom.
Dean: When I interviewed her she would always say, My mom was my best friend.
Which is really sad.
Antosca: We all felt in the writers room that Gypsy is a victim as well as a killer.
I mean, theres no question.
I personally have a great deal of sympathy.
Yet we also felt that Dee Deedidlove her daughter.
She just had an extreme pathology, and her love came out in a way that was poisonous.
Dee Dee is not portrayed unsympathetically.
Her fear itself is real, even if the things shes afraid of arent.
To a certain extent, thats also the trap that the abused child is in.
Like, we read Rachel Cusk and and Vivian Gornick and Adrienne Rich.
I know, right?
I am proud of this fact.
And Nick loves those books.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations with Nick Antosca and Michelle Dean.
