Colin Firth avoided speaking with murderer Michael Peterson before playing him in 'The Staircase'.
Colin Firth ruled out speaking to murderer Michael Peterson before playing him in 'The Staircase'
The 61-year-old actor plays the real-life author, who was convicted of murdering his second wife Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette), in the HBO Max true-crime drama, and he insisted it would have disrupted the "very carefully calibrated" story if he'd discussed it with Peterson.
Firth explained to Deadline: "I felt the way the script was structured and just the whole approach of this was its own ecosystem, so to speak.
“These are created characters but we all know what the source is.
“We all know that these characters have names of living people, but it’s very carefully calibrated to tell the story in a certain way.”
He continued: “I wanted to keep my inspiration, my motivation, and the sense of the source material, as much as possible contained within the script and the way it was written.”
The 'Love Actually' star added that he didn't want his portrayal to be "skewed in some way if I had personal connections…with Michael Peterson and other people concerned. If I’d had a personal response to the meeting, it might have prevented me from tuning into this world of varying possibilities that had been created.”
The miniseries also stars Sophie Turner and Patrick Schwarzenegger.
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