The True Story Behind HBO Max’s New Series ‘The Staircase’
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HBO Max has done it again, folks. From Big Little Lies, to Station Eleven, to Landscapers, the streamer’s limited series thrillers can’t be beat. Their latest project, The Staircase, is a dramatic retelling of the Michael Peterson murder case, made famous in 2004 by a French television miniseries of the same name by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (available to stream on Netflix).
Let’s break down the case. In 2001, crime novelist Michael Peterson called the police to report that his wife Kathleen had taken a drunken and fatal fall down the stairs. The police had their doubts pretty much immediately, coming to their own conclusion that Michael had bludgeoned his wife with a blow poke that was mysteriously missing from the home.
Peterson was charged with murder and during his trial the world learned that years back, while he had been living in Germany, a woman he was friends with died from a brain injury from falling down the stairs. Coincidence? The prosecution didn’t think so. Though the death was ultimately labeled accidental by the German police and U.S. military, they argued that the event taught Peterson how to fake an accident of this nature. He later adopted her children.
The prosecution argued that Kathleen Peterson had discovered her husband, who was bisexual, was having affairs with men. The two began to argue, and she was bludgeoned to death. The defense was simple, yet weak. They claimed Michael was by the pool when his wife fell down the stairs, and thus there was no way he could have heard her cries for help. He found her at the bottom of the stairs in a pool of blood and called the police.
The trial was a media frenzy and in 2003, Michael Peterson was found guilty in one of the longest trials in North Carolina’s history. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but the story doesn’t end there.
Michael Peterson was released from prison in 2011 after the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's analyst on the case, Duane Deaver, was found to have given "materially misleading and deliberately false testimony regarding the bloodstain evidence in Peterson's case." This misleading blood testimony was a key part of the case against Peterson; the blood found at the scene is what took this case from accidental fall to vicious murder. That said, there was a lot of blood–like, a lot.
After reviewing the testimony surrounding the blood evidence in this case, many believed Michael Peterson may very well be innocent, or he may very well be guilty. In the end, his legal team advised him to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and using something called the Alford plea, Peterson was re-sentenced to fewer years than he had served and walked out totally free.
The case continues to be a huge source of debate, with more and more theories about who really killed Kathleen Peterson swirling in the true crime space. Enter, HBO Max.
The cast of The Staircase is stacked–Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson, and Andy Serkis as an owl (more on that later). The series also stars Juliette Binoche, Parker Posey, Sophie Turner, Patrick Shwarzenegger, Dane Dehaan, and Michael Stulhbarg.
Run to your couch stat, but don’t take the stairs.
“The Staircase” is streaming on HBO Max now.
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