- 51 minutes ago
The Emmy nominees stopped by the THR offices to talk about their Netflix documentary series.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Everyone, welcome to another edition of Meet Your Nominee, and today we have a special treat for you.
00:05We have the director and executive producer from The Keepers in the house.
00:10How's it going, guys?
00:11Great. Great. Thanks for having us.
00:12Yeah, thanks for coming out.
00:14Congratulations on the nomination.
00:16How did you guys hear the news? I always love hearing how you guys hear.
00:19Or get the phone call.
00:21Well, I got up and I watched, and they have the live feed of people announcing the actors and actresses,
00:27and I watched all of that, and then at the end of that they just put up a big PDF
00:30that has all of the extra categories
00:32that they didn't announce live, so I saw the PDF and I searched it through, and I saw that our
00:36series was on it,
00:37and then immediately texted Ryan, actually, to share the news, and I assumed he knew.
00:42I'm not good at PDFs. I had no idea.
00:44Did you know how to open the attachment?
00:46I couldn't get the PDF to open.
00:48So I just wrote, yay, and then assumed that he would know what I meant.
00:51I mean, he did to some extent, but it took him a second.
00:54He called instead and was like, oh, does that mean we're nominated?
00:56And I said it does, so then I sent him the link.
00:59And then that night, we called our whole team together, all the post team that's out here,
01:04and said, if you guys are around, let's get a drink to celebrate.
01:06So everybody who was available to came out and met us out.
01:09And Jess's two-week-old baby, one-week-old baby at that time.
01:12Yeah, she came too.
01:12So that was fun.
01:13No big deal.
01:15Man, balancing it all.
01:16I guess I should probably introduce you guys first.
01:18Oh, sure. Sorry.
01:19We have director Ryan White and executive producer Jessica Hargrave.
01:26So this is not, clearly you guys know each other.
01:28I hear you guys go really far back.
01:30So how did this combination come about?
01:33We go back to the 80s.
01:36Way back.
01:37We were best friends starting in fourth grade.
01:40So all of our childhood and teenage years spent as best friends.
01:44And then in our adulthood began working together.
01:46So Jess has produced all of my documentaries and especially produced The Keepers
01:51because it was always just the two of us in Baltimore when we were doing this
01:55over the course of three years.
01:56So it was she and I staying in my uncle's attic for three years in Baltimore.
02:02Not glamorous.
02:04Not glamorous.
02:04People think filmmaking is very glamorous, and it's definitely not.
02:08No.
02:08No, not the documentary kind.
02:10No.
02:11And especially ones with such hefty subjects.
02:17But this isn't the first film that we're hearing about that you two have worked on.
02:21There's a little film called The Case for Eight that was also Emmy-nominated.
02:25So this is not your first rodeo.
02:26No.
02:27Yeah, The Case Against Eight.
02:28The Case Against Eight.
02:29Because 4A would be for Proposition 8.
02:32The Case Against Eight, minor detail.
02:34But that was, yeah, that was our HBO film that I believe got an Emmy nomination three years ago.
02:39So this is our second one.
02:40Yeah.
02:41Yeah.
02:41Very excited.
02:42Very exciting.
02:43So let's talk about the series.
02:48How did you guys first initially hear the story, you know, of Sister Kathy's murder?
02:53So my mom is from Baltimore, from a big Catholic family there.
02:58So the epicenter of The Keepers is a high school called Archbishop Keough High School,
03:03All Girls Catholic High School, and my aunt went to that high school and was Sister Kathy's
03:08student.
03:09And as you see in the series, our main character is this woman who's always been a sort of mystery
03:14figure named Jane Doe.
03:16She's always been under that pseudonym.
03:18And my mom and aunt found out a few years ago that their friend was, in fact, Jane Doe.
03:23So they connected us with Jane Doe, whose real name is Jean Wainer, and that's the whole genesis
03:30of The Keepers just began at a five-hour conversation at her dining room table.
03:35Goodness.
03:35Now she shares, I mean, she gets, the things that she shares in this film, just her experience
03:41is disturbing and very heavy.
03:44How did you guys get her to open up to you guys like that on camera even?
03:49That's a whole other level.
03:50It took, I mean, it took some time, you know, to build that trust.
03:54Like Ryan said, the first conversation to even gauge her interest was five hours.
03:58And after that, there were many more five-hour conversations off camera.
04:01We met her family.
04:01We met her daughter, her son, her brother.
04:04She has nine siblings.
04:05We've met almost all of them.
04:06I think we're missing one after the three years.
04:09And so basically, it was just developing this trust between us as a team and also trying to
04:14make it as comfortable as possible.
04:15We didn't have lights.
04:16We didn't have a sound guy.
04:17It was just the two of us and our DP, who is a really amazing DP named John Benham,
04:23excuse me, who's very talented but also very kind and very warm.
04:26And so it just took a lot of time to say, like, you can trust us and we're going to
04:30have
04:30a conversation constantly.
04:31I think that that was really important.
04:32Like on camera, off camera, we are still in touch with her all the time and just saying,
04:36you know, we're here and we have the same goals and we want to work with you and be
04:40sure that you're comfortable.
04:40And we also just felt this great responsibility to do right by her.
04:43Right.
04:44We wanted her to know that.
04:45Right.
04:45You guys mentioned that you've been working on this for three years.
04:49Has it been solely working on it for three years?
04:51Or is this kind of like, since you've known about the story, you've kind of put it in
04:55the back of your brain, like, I do want to make this into a film.
04:58Like, when did you decide that you want to pursue this film?
05:01Well, I think by nature, our jobs are so unpredictable.
05:04You never know what you have until you're deep into it.
05:08So we knew that we were compelled by Jane Doe the moment we left her apartment, that if
05:12she wanted to participate in some way in telling her story, which had been deliberately buried
05:18for so long, that we wanted to be a part of that with her.
05:21But there's no guarantee that that will ever become a film.
05:24And so what was really interesting in making The Keepers was that we began it before Serial
05:29had come out, before The Jinx had come out, before Making a Murder had come out.
05:33So there really was no predecessor yet of telling these true crime stories in an episodic format.
05:40So we were kind of watching from the sidelines, just shooting our documentary very quietly
05:45with Jane Doe and a few of the others, as all of these things became cultural phenomenons.
05:50So the timing was very good by the time Making a Murder had come out, which I believe is the
05:55last one, that we started shopping around The Keepers and saying, we'd like to make it
06:00in a longer format too, and thankfully we found Netflix as the partner.
06:04That's great.
06:05At what point did they come on board?
06:08I think we'd been shooting for about a year and a half.
06:13We actually had support from Sundance early on, and so we had met with someone, Lisa Nishimura
06:17from Netflix, at a Sundance event.
06:19And so she was aware of it, but we didn't actually partner until a year and a half, two
06:23years in, something like that.
06:25Again, part of it is just that we wanted to keep it really small and keep it comfortable
06:28for everybody until we say, it's really daunting to say, okay, we're going to partner with Netflix
06:33and that means it's going to be in 190 countries on one day.
06:36So you want to wait until we have that conversation a little bit later, until they're really comfortable
06:42and know where this is headed.
06:44As filmmakers, I imagine that you had this challenge in front of you where you're telling
06:48this story, but in the end, there's no solving it.
06:53And so how do you create a series?
06:55Was that kind of a daunting task to create a piece of work with no payoff in the end for
07:01people that have never seen, that don't know about the story?
07:04Yeah, it's a great question because we can't write our endings as much as we want to.
07:08And actually the first version of The Keepers we handed in was six episodes and I said,
07:12I don't have an ending yet.
07:13So they allowed me to do a seventh episode.
07:16So, you know, it's real life and it's following real people's incredibly painful and emotional
07:23journeys.
07:23And so we felt like we had endings and we knew that that wasn't going to be the definitive
07:29answer to Who Killed Sister Kathy, but that's never what we set out to do from the beginning.
07:34However, now that the series has come out, I think it's been out for two months on Netflix.
07:39The amount of information that's pouring in, coming out of the woodwork all over Baltimore
07:43and the country is so much stuff that I'm quite optimistic that this murder could be solved
07:50if enough people speak up.
07:51So, you know, it might not be the final moments.
07:55We don't have Robert Durst, you know, confessing into a hot mic, but you feel the impact of the
08:01series and perhaps that that could lead to the answers.
08:04And one of the things that has come out of this is the online petition.
08:08I think there's an online petition now.
08:10Over 45,000 have signed it.
08:13It's asking for the Baltimore Archdiocese to release the files on Joseph Maskell.
08:19Now, what do you think these files will contain if they're put out there?
08:25I don't know.
08:26That's the whole mystery of the Catholic Church.
08:29They won't show any transparency and show what they knew and when they knew it.
08:33So I think them showing those files, no matter what is in them, would lead to a lot of healing
08:40in Baltimore.
08:41We know that from the survivors that we've worked with.
08:44All six survivors that are in the keepers signed that petition.
08:48And there are countless other Maskell victims out there that also want them, for the sake
08:52of transparency and for the sake of healing, to release those records.
08:56And so far, they just continue to say no.
09:00Have you gotten any pushback?
09:02Or what has the reaction been from the Catholic Church?
09:05Have you gotten any feedback?
09:08We haven't heard from them directly, but they have issued statements and they have responded
09:13to the series on their website with what they consider to be inaccurate, which we disagree
09:19with.
09:19There's disagreements between us and them.
09:22That's part of the reason we want the files to be open.
09:23We think that that would help lead to that transparency.
09:25But we haven't been in touch with them directly.
09:27But we haven't.
09:28We've been surprised to see exactly how aggressive they've come out.
09:32Because to us, this is a series about being anti-child sex abuse.
09:36It's not anti-church.
09:37And everybody is anti-child sex abuse.
09:38So we were surprised at how critically they swung their bats at us, you know.
09:43But in the end, that's, I guess, we shouldn't be surprised to some extent because we've
09:48been working with these survivors for so long and we know how they've been treated.
09:52I guess the next question is, I know you're a new mom and just doing a story about child
09:58abuse and having to, I guess, do the press and everything after you had put out this film.
10:06I mean, how did you handle that all?
10:08It's tough.
10:09I mean, one of the things that has been most surprising to me and one of the things that
10:13has been most eye-opening to me in making this series is the ripple effect of child sex abuse.
10:17So I hadn't done much work with survivors before.
10:20But now that I have and now that we have, we've seen not only does the effect last in
10:24the survivor for decades until they die, it also affects the entire family.
10:29Right.
10:29And so as a new mom, I think about that and I think about what it must have felt like
10:33for
10:33these parents, what it feels like now.
10:35We meet these survivors' children, we meet their siblings, we meet their grandchildren.
10:39This whole family is affected.
10:41It's unbelievable to think that what one person, in this case many people, but what one person
10:45can do to someone and the effects that it can have decades later.
10:48And in this case, for that someone who started all of this to die a free man and yet these
10:52people
10:52are still suffering, it's just, it's just horrifying and it just, it breaks my heart.
10:56Right.
10:57Right.
10:58There's another disappearance that's tied to this time period, Joyce Malecki.
11:04Why was it important to include her story?
11:08Because she was connected to Father Mass School and she went missing four days after Sister Kathy
11:13in the same neighborhood during a time period where young women weren't going missing and
11:17they were found murdered in very similar ways.
11:19And as we investigate in the documentary, both of these women were connected to Father
11:24Mass School.
11:25So, um, we can't unequivocally draw a connection, um, between the two murders, but we thought
11:31it warranted its inclusion.
11:32It's also a family who's had to suffer in silence as well for the last 45 years without any answers
11:38from the FBI.
11:38And by the way, there's a separate petition going for the FBI to release the files that they
11:43have about Joyce Malecki, which has also been repeatedly turned down to Abby Shaw, who's
11:48one of our characters in The Keepers.
11:49So I'm hopeful that such a great exposure that Netflix has given, um, not just the murder
11:55of Sister Kathy, but also the murder of Joyce Malecki might lead to her family finally getting
12:00some answers.
12:01Because as you see in the end of the series, very sadly her brother passed away recently,
12:07and we had worked with him quite a bit and he, he never had any answers.
12:10Yeah.
12:11Uh, we kind of touched on this earlier, but much of the series, um, kind of is based on
12:16this Facebook group and people that have come out with memories that have, you know, you've
12:21been able to piece things together.
12:23Um, how has, you know, from the response that you're getting, how has the conversation expanded
12:27after the release of the film?
12:29Like, did a lot more people come forward with more information?
12:33Yeah, I mean, that, so the Facebook group that initially existed and that sort of started
12:37this whole movement has, had to be put on pause because it got overwhelmed with requests.
12:42It just was like up in the tens of thousands of people and it was unmanageable.
12:45So there's now a new Facebook page, um, and that's got, I think, a hundred thousand plus
12:49members.
12:50Um, some of them are just people who aren't in the community and just are trying, looking
12:53to help and looking to have conversations.
12:55Others are members of the community, but beside even that page, those members of the community
13:00who have their own stories to tell, their own information to share, have reached out directly
13:04to Jim and Abby.
13:05They've reached out directly to us.
13:06They've reached out to the other survivors.
13:08A lot of what we've seen are these other survivors coming forward.
13:12It's heartbreaking, but it's also, I'm glad that they're able to hopefully get the help
13:15that they need or find some sort of comfort in the fact that they're not alone and they
13:19have this community.
13:20But we've seen survivors, not only in this community, to be honest, but around the world who've reached
13:24out and said, like, I'm so touched by this and I'm so glad to see this.
13:28Yeah.
13:30With all the new information, is there a possibility of a season two?
13:34Uh, you're not the first to ask that, but...
13:36I was gonna, I was gonna wait to see what she said.
13:40You tell us.
13:41We're not, we're keeping our ear to the ground, for sure.
13:43Yeah.
13:43Like Jess said, there's a lot of information coming to us right now.
13:47Right.
13:47Jess just had a baby.
13:48I'm moving on to a new project.
13:50So, there's not even enough time in the day to keep up with the amount of information coming
13:54in.
13:54But we're definitely keeping our ear to the ground.
13:56And I think if certain developments panned out, we would consider doing some follow-up.
14:01But I think we're both really pleased with what The Keeper's journey was in those seven
14:07episodes.
14:08And I think it really is a character portrait of Jane Doe in the end.
14:12And we felt like we had reached a good closing point with her.
14:15So, if a few things shake out in certain ways, I think we would consider, but right now we're
14:20not filming anything.
14:22Why do you think true crime stories are really starting to, like, become mainstream and really
14:27resonating with people?
14:28What do you guys think?
14:30I think that people are looking for justice.
14:33People are interested in finding justice.
14:35And they hate seeing when justice hasn't been served.
14:37And that's a theme in all of these different true crime series and radio shows and everything
14:42that's been taking off is that people are frustrated by the lack of justice and they want to see
14:47something done to right the wrong.
14:50And I think that that has, what's different about our series, I think, to a lot of these
14:54different ones, different series, is that we focus on the survivors and on the victims instead
14:58of actually focusing so much on the perpetrators.
15:02Yeah.
15:03So, I'd like to think that ours is a little bit different than a lot of what's out there
15:07right now.
15:07But at the same time, it is a story of injustice.
15:09Right.
15:10It's definitely the story of survival.
15:13And I think what resonated was more that it also shows the ramifications of, you know,
15:20the things, how you have to live with it for 45 years.
15:23Right.
15:23And you can, the people that you leave our series talking about are the survivors, are
15:27the victims, are the people who suffered and not the people who are the criminals.
15:30Right.
15:32Guys, thanks so much for spending some time with us.
15:34My pleasure.
15:34We're looking forward to September 17th.
15:36That's Emmy night.
15:38Let's talk about Emmy night for a quick second.
15:41Since it's not your first time there, how are you guys going to do it differently?
15:44Like, are you going to put snacks in your purse or?
15:48I always have snacks.
15:50We go to the Nerdy Emmys, the creative arts Emmys.
15:53They don't give out the documentaries at the fancy Emmys.
15:55Maybe one year we'll get there.
15:58Yeah, yeah.
15:58So we'll be at the Nerdy Emmys that nobody watches.
16:02Probably with snacks and Jess's purse.
16:04But we might go to the primetime ones as well just for fun and to the Netflix party afterwards.
16:09But we'll have already known for a week whether we're a winner or a loser, so.
16:15Oh, man.
16:16Well, best of luck to you guys.
16:18We're excited.
16:19And to catch The Keepers, definitely go to Netflix.
16:22And thanks so much for joining us.
16:24Bye, everyone.
Comments