Latest / Legally Brunette / Killer Thriller: Did Her Texts Kill Him? The Shocking True Story Behind The Girl From Plainville

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Killer Thriller: Did Her Texts Kill Him? The Shocking True Story Behind The Girl From Plainville · Legally Brunette

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Killer Thriller with your host,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Elisa Donovan.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Hey, everybody. Elisa Donovan here, and this is Killer Thriller.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: In 2014, 18-year-old Conrad Coco Roy was found.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Dead inside his truck.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Investigators soon discovered thousands of messages between Conrad and 17-year-old
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Michelle Carter. including messages encouraging him to take his own life.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: But the most shocking revelation came later. Conrad had gotten
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: out of the truck, frightened, and Michelle admitted to telling
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: him to get back in. She was ultimately convicted of
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: involuntary manslaughter in a landmark case that became the Hulu series,
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: The Girl from Plainville. Joining me today is the series
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: co-creator and co-executive producer, Patrick McManus. Patrick, welcome back to
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: killer thriller. And thank you again for talking with me.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: I'll start by saying, I know this was a while ago,
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: the girl from Plainville, but I just finished it at
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: midnight last night.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: So it's really super fresh for me.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: And I just want to say straight away this and unexpectedly.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: So this was just incredibly heartbreaking to me, this series. And,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: So beautifully made. And again, the performances are stellar. I
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: could go on and on and on, and we will,
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I'm sure. But it really reveals the heartbreaking private and
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: internal pain that teenagers go through, and that deep loneliness,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: the urge, and the need to connect for both Conrad
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: and Michelle. And it was honestly, it was very, very
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: hard for me to watch, but I think it's extraordinarily
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: important to, to talk about. So you went into this
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: maybe thinking that you knew the Michelle Carter story, but
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: what did you learn that made you realize what you
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: thought you knew wasn't actually the whole story?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, thank you very much for that,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: for the, the praise of the show. And I'm, and
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: take it just a second and also, uh, loop in, um, uh,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Liz Hanna, who co-created it with me, um, cause she
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: was an extraordinary partner and, uh, and we were, we
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: were writing that and filming that in the heart of
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the beginning of COVID. Uh, and so we, we were,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: we were, we were in it together and, um, she is, uh,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: she's a very, very talented writer. And as it turns out, director,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: cause she directed for the first time on the show
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: as well. And, um, And so any praise that comes
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: my way, three quarters goes back to Liz. So to
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: answer the question, you know, I did come in with
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: some working knowledge of Michelle. So when I got Jesse
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Barron's article, which is what kicked this entire thing off,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I had landed very solidly on the idea that Michelle
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: was just a a deeply broken bordering on psychotic individual.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And so I came in with a judgment, which is
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: never a really good place to start as a writer
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and especially a writer of true crime. I will say
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: that I quickly tried to push that away. Like once
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I had the opportunity to begin to delve into the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: research and the thing that, that, I will say that
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I learned in 2019, which is sort of when I
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: first started circling the project, was that this show ultimately
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: was a show that was, and what happened between Michelle,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: you know, with Michelle was ahead of its time in
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: many ways.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: And what I mean by.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: That is that she was clearly a, a broken individual,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: of course, but she was also a product.
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: She and Conrad were a product of.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: The internet age and specifically social media and even more
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: specifically the dangers of phone.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: Usage all the time, right? And living in your own fantasy.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: And as a father to two sons who are friends,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: not just with other boys, but with other teenage girls
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles, you can see exactly how something
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: like this could go the way that it went. And
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: so she went from being somebody who, again, did obviously
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a quote-unquote bad thing, but I don't know if she
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: necessarily had the tools.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: To be able to do the right thing.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: And it also felt very much like the series really
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: gives you a sense of this, that she might not
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: even have fully understood what the ramifications of what she
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: was doing, but also might've really believed that she was
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: helping him achieve something, but then also the own kind
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: of self, like it's, it really shows the complications of
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: all of this.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: And that's sort of how we, we built it as
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: a writer's room. If you see Dr. Death, you see
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: obviously this, you see Dublin Skies. I'm not a big
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: believer in ending these stories with a bow because I
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: actually fundamentally believe that most of the time, these stories
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: are not built in black and white, that there is
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: so much gray to them.
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: And there are.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Usually multiple parties involved or institutions to blame quote unquote
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: for what went wrong. There's always an, there's an individual
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: who did a bad thing, but there is something.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: Larger that, that, that helped nurture it in some ways. Right.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And in the case of Michelle, obviously she, she, she
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: did a wrong thing, but she, that's the easy way
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of just ending.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: And then there's no story to tell. She just did
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: a bad thing. Right.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But exploring where she was emotionally and where she was
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: mentally and where she was simply in, in, in, in, in,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: in her evolution as a teenage girl, right.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: Young woman.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And what both young women and young men go through
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: as they enter the stage of life is, You know,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it's tricky to just say that she was evil or
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that she was bad. I think that that would let
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: you sleep better at night, especially as a parent. But
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: as a parent myself now, who's now with teenage kids,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: this was six years ago that I did this. Now
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I got teenagers. I am watching all of the dangers
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: that are around them. And I realize that there's a
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: lot lurking in the darkness out there around these kids.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: And it's so much easier than you would ever anticipate
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: because I have a 14-year-old daughter too.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: And I see these things. It's overwhelming sometimes.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: And this case in particular became known as the texting
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: suicide case, which is accurate, but it's pretty reductive. It
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: doesn't really explain the entire thing. And you had access
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: to their actual text messages, which were essentially the record
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: of their relationship. And what surprised you most about reading
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: those from beginning to end?
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Oh God, that's the easiest thing for me to talk
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: about because, um, so at first I had to get
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the rights to the story and Jesse, um, was lovely
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: enough to give me the right. This is before Liz
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: came on board. I, I, I was doing, I was
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: writing Dr. Death season one in the room and this
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: came across my desk. And then I, uh, Elle, uh, Fanning,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I was already sort of, yeah.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Another one.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: She's, And by the way, one of the greatest things
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: that's come out of this is that every once in
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: a while, Elle and I just get to text.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: And I love her to death.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: You use that with your teenage sons? You're like, hey,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: just so you know, once in a while, she texts me.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: It's cool.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I have a few numbers in my phone that make
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: me cool and a lot of numbers in my phone
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: that I'm very uncool.
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: And I personally am very uncool.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Elle is definitely one of the cool ones. There's no question.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And we have, we've become friends. I mean, it was
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: a long process. And I will say that she, so when, I.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: Don't know, what is she? She's 29 now? 28, 29?
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: So she was something like 21, 22 when we met.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And that first meeting that she and I and Jesse had,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: she's a woman who is way beyond her years. I mean,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: and every note that she ever gave, every challenge she
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: ever made over the course of that, from that first
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: dinner until wrap of production, when Elle had a thought,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: you should listen because she is just so, so smart.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And she was from the very beginning. And so anyway,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: so the point being that once L was on board
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and I had got the article, I was given all
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the research and I got these texts.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: And again, I was alone again.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: So now I'm alone and I'm trying to figure out
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: how to make this show work. And I'm a, I'm a,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: you know, an early forties, you know, man who probably
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be doing this show, which is how Liz came
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: into the, into the picture. I was like, I need
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: probably another perspective on this.
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: That isn't just mine.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And I, when I pitched the studio my idea for
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the show before anybody else was involved, the first thing
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that came out was this idea that the texts would
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: live as dramatizations, that we would try to avoid the
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: bubbles as much as possible.
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: We had to have some bubbles.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: But in a show that was entirely about texting, you
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: had to find a novel way of doing it.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: Sure, great, whatever.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: But to the point of your question, This relationship that
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: existed almost entirely on texts was as real as any
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: relationship that took place at an ice cream parlor or
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: at a movie theater or at a dance or in
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: a backyard. This lived real for them, and especially for Michelle.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: But it was real. They were in love. They had
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: something that they had to fight for.
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: And so when.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: So the point of the dramatization wasn't just to not
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: have audiences reading text bubbles.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: It was like, you got to get in the mind of.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: These kids where this is their way of communicating and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: connecting on everything. And so when a young man says,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: love of my life, I want to take my life.
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: It's got a reality to it.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: And that's where the nuance and the gray comes in
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: where you can't just say this young woman was just broken.
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: You have to say that, that, that, that she was
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: also in love.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's very, it's very clear. And that's, it's such
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: a beautiful way of doing it because you also, when you,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: when you, when you're dramatizing it with them actually together
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: in the same space, you see that the, the, the,
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: and also because they're both brilliant actors, you see that
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: like the discomfort and the awkwardness and the, that real
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: just desire to connect, but not knowing how to do it.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: And it's just devastating. It's so heartbreaking. I could cry
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: thinking about.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: It, imagining. It's a lot, too.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: And so do you think that Michelle and Conrad were
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: actually experiencing the same relationship? Or did each of them
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: have kind of a different idea of what they were
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: to one another?
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: So that one is, that's a little bit tricky because
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I definitely think that Michelle Carter was in love with this, with,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: with Conrad. I, again, look, everybody, this is my opinion
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and only my opinion. And people I think can have,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: will have different perspectives on it.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: But I, I, I think that she was in love with,
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: with him.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I think that Conrad was very interested in her and, and,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: but I think that, He had a little bit of
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: a broader life that was outside of just her. And we,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: you know, we explore a little bit of it in
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the series, not fully. I mean, because again, we had
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: access to all of her private texts that had nothing
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: to do with him.
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: We had access to his texts that had nothing to
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: do with her.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, if we were to tell this
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: story truly, truly right, it would have been three seasons
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: of storytelling because their lives were much broader, especially his
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: life was much broader than we were able to do
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: in eight episodes of A True Crime. But I do
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: think that regardless of whether he had his eyes set
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: in multiple directions and hers was sort of myopic, He
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: definitely had a relationship with her that took place online.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And I really do wonder, and this is a little
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: bit of a sidebar, I wonder how I would approach
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: this show now.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: Now, seven years later, when we're in the throes of
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: really how.
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: Damaging.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: And now seeing my kids where I got to wrestle
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: phones out of their hands and computers out of their
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: hands and, and, and get into battle royales over the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: fact that, you know, their social life is online. And I,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: you know, I wonder how I would do it differently
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: because I do think that I have a different perspective
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: now as a, as a parent to, to teenage, to teenage,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: to teenage boys who are friends with also teenage girls.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: So early on, Michelle encouraged Conrad to get help, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: then eventually she was encouraging him to die, to take
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: his life. Was there a point in their messages where
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: you could actually see that shift happening?
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: Yes, 100%. Yep.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I don't have it locked into my head the way
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: that I used to have it locked into my head,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and I apologize for that. But absolutely, in the three
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: days leading up to his taking his life, he... made
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a really strong push on her, and she clearly started
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to encourage him to do it, including, and we have
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: it in the show, including giving him multiple ways.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: In which he could die by suicide. And that took
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: a really disturbing turn. And that's where you begin to.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Question who Michelle Carter is because I mean, she says
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: she was advised to say you could drink bleach, right?
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Like she starts to get super prescriptive, but then you'll
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: like see in the text where she bounces back to
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: being buoyant and, and they're just having a regular conversation and,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: But there's no question that in those last few days,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: she took a hard turn to encouraging him. And then
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: she said in her defense that she realized that he
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: really wanted to go and she wanted to help him.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And that was her, again, we can debate it, right?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Was it that it was actually she was psychopathic? Or
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: was it that she was in love and thinking that
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: she was playing Romeo and Juliet, which he was saying
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to her, I could be your Romeo, right?
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: So it wasn't that he was, he wasn't discouraging it.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: It also really brings to light how text has no nuance.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: We don't understand what the tone of something is and
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: we interpret it the way, dependent upon how we're feeling
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: at the moment, what we are looking for in response.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: And you really don't, No, and that's how it can
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: be so, so dangerous.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. I mean, look, it's, I mean, I'm going to
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: go back to it again.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, it's, it's this thing, this, this,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: this story, Girl from Plainville was the hardest story that,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I've talked about how Devil in Disguise was
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the easiest story for me to write. This was the
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: hardest one for me to be a part of because
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: there are so many nooks and crannies of ethical and
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: moral and societal responsibilities to be explored in this case. Yeah. And,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and one of those things is how we communicate with
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: each other and are we communicating right with each other?
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: And, and look, as a 50 year old man who
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: wishes that we could just get back to the eighties,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I think that we're deeply off track.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: Me too. Me too.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But then I think that my parents thought that
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: we were off track and their parents thought that they
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: were off track. Right.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: I know. I try to make those parallels, but I.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: But I think that the more that we remove ourselves
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: from one another physically, the more.
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: People lack humanity.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not to be super reductive, but it's
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: kind of like the reason why if somebody steps on
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: our foot in an elevator, we say, no problem. But
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: if somebody crosses into our lane in a car without signaling,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: we scream obscenities at them. There's this remove that enables
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: us to just get into our most basic base instincts
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: of rage and contempt and judgment. And the more that
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: we remove ourselves from one another's humanity, the easier it
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: is to ultimately do wrong by people.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: I really think this is one of the reasons that
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: this series is so effective. in making that choice to
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: show these two people speaking to one another as opposed
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: to reading, you're forced to really look at, oh, god,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: this is how this could have felt. Like, if they
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: were in person, perhaps this wouldn't have ended the way
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: it did. Because if you have to sit with a
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: person and hold their hand or look in their eyes,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: you have a different impact.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: There is no world, in my opinion, there is no
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: world in which Michelle Carter sits in that parking lot
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: physically with him and lets him take his own life.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: There's no world. I don't see it being possible. And
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I think that that's like the great tragedy. And I
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: will say, and I'm not defending her. I'm in no
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: way defending her. I'm just speaking biography. She did say
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: to him she wanted to reach out to his parents.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: And he basically said, I'll never talk to you again
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: if you do that. And that was heartbreaking to her, right?
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: And so I think that there's no world if they
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: were together that it would have gone the way that
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: it went. And that's, I guess, kind of a little
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: bit of the point. But yeah, it's a particularly tragic
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: story on so many levels. And definitely, like I said,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the most challenging show to do. And I'll say because
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Liz and I talked ad nauseum beforehand and then talked
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to the room and then talked on set. About how
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: our greatest fear was that this was going to somehow
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: romanticize mental health issues or desires, predilections towards suicide. And
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that made it a very dangerous show. But it actually,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I think that we threaded that needle, I think.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, I absolutely think that you did. When I say,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: I have to watch a lot of disturbing things for
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: this podcast. And there are many that keep me up
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: at night for various reasons. This, honestly, I've just felt
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: so sick and so just, it's incredibly important, the discussions
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: that this show brings up and that this case bring
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: to light.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: And I just, I.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: Can I ask you a question?
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Yes. I'm curious.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: Would you, would you let your daughter watch it?
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: I thought about this because she, while several of the
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: times when I was watching it over the course of
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: the last day and a half, she, you know, was here.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: She didn't have school yet yesterday.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: And I, I absolutely not right now, but I think
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: she's 14. And I would let her, I would watch
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: it with her. I think maybe, I mean, maybe now
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: or maybe in six months or so, maybe when she's 15, 15.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Because it just, it covers so.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Many things that, you know, as a parent, you can
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: talk all day long in your kid's ear about whatever.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: And it's usually, at least maybe it's only in my case,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: You know, it's not very easy to hear or to
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: digest or to listen to. And that's another thing of
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: why I think telling these kinds of stories in narrative
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: form is so important because we can digest them in
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: a different way. And so I will, I would, I
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: would let her see it, but I may be in
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: six months or so or.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: When she's 15.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: You're definitely not the only one, just to be clear.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: There's a long line throughout the course of history of
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: kids not listening to their parents in any way, shape,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: or form.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: That's for sure.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: But I get it. My eldest watched it five years ago.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: He's 15. But only because I.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: It was COVID, and I was editing in my house,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and so he would sit in and.
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: Watch with me.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Wait, when he was 10?
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: I'm a terrible parent.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Well, you also, it's different if you're actually there editing it,
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: and then you can have a real... He can have
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: an understanding. These are not real people. Even though they
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: are real people, you can watch. It's a different.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they've seen all of my stuff in various forms
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: because they just.
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I, I, again, I don't know if
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: I'm doing it right or wrong.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I was raised by a single mom and, um, she
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: was a cocktail waitress and a bartender and there.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: Was, she had no control over us. Right. She couldn't.
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: And so she sort of had to trust us.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And so we watched everything and we read everything and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: at very young ages. And I just sort of, um,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: our house is sort of built the same way, which
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: is like, look, we're going to talk about it. Um,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: especially if you see something that doesn't make sense, we're
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: going to talk about it.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: But yeah.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: We definitely, I mean, this is a really interesting question
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: because sometimes I think, I think I'm far more conservative
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: than I believe I am.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Or than I present, you know?
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: And I don't know that that's good either because, but
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: we at the same time are very much, I am
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: a big believer in talking about it, about whatever is
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: happening and what you see and what you might see.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: And All of that.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I think the point of this conversation and our past
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: conversation is that there are very rarely right and wrong
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: answers in life. And I think that there's very rarely
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: a right and a wrong. I mean, I can pinpoint
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the wrong things you should do as a parent to
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a kid, but I think that this is all personal.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: And it's all.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And the more that we see each other as individuals
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: with individual wants and needs and ways of learning and
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: ways of harming, right? And then... we'll be a better
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: society if we could break out of the one size
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: fits all.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Conrad struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts long before Michelle
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: entered his life.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: That's well documented. But what did.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: You feel the headlines had missed about who he actually was?
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Look, I think that what was interesting, I think that Conrad... God,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: it's such a great.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Question because it, it feels like the headlines figured it out.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: After the fact, you know, like he was just like,
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: I hate.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: To, to really be, to really boil it down, but
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: he was just a regular kid. I mean, like, and,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: and that all came out in many ways. I feel
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: like it was, it was almost wielded against Michelle Carter
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: in some ways about how, this is just a regular
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: kid who was going through some tough times and she
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: took advantage of that and murdered him, right? And I
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: look at it a little bit, I look at it
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: a lot differently, but I think he was a regular
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: kid who was battling with his mental health, who I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: think his parents both supported and struggled in trying to
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: figure out what worked for him.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: Which I think makes him all the more of a
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: regular kid.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Yes. That was so identifiable, even though the details are
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: different in my own life, for example. But I think
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: that is a very, it's done so well. And again,
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Norbert and Chloe, good lord. What an embarrassment of riches
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: in this show, too. Everyone is so, so good.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: Without a doubt.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: And I will say with all due respect to Elle,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Chloe being in my phone is cooler.
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: But that may just be... Elle, if you're listening, I
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: love you. You know I love you.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: But Chloe, much like Marin, has a tough job as
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: well that she... But somehow finds the rainbow myriad of
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: colors of grief and worry about your child.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Like those two things. She somehow... made it a feast of,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: she just is so, so good.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Someday someone's going to recognize Chloe, 78's talent and, and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: put her in things.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: It's, it's any day now she's going to break out.
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: I'll tell you. So she's just, she's amazing. She's amazing.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, and, and you're completely, I don't want to even,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to just repeat what you said. So I'm
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: not going to do that. Like she, watching her do
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: her thing was, was magical. And, and in a similar
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: way that I, that we spoke about Marin, we, we,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: yell cut and suddenly you're just hanging out with Chloe and,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and talking about the grateful dead and whatever.
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: You know, like, you know, like she, she was just
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: so she's magic. She's pure magic.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Um, and, and, and, and, uh, and on, on the, um,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: and the next version of us doing this, um, I
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: will share the story of me trying to put in
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a baby gate into her, uh, house when she arrived
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: in Savannah and totally, and totally screwing it up.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Endangering the lives of children, right?
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: No, they never got behind it.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I screwed it up so hard that we had to
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: bring a professional in to put it in. So anyways,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: and she still forgave me. But anyways, yeah, no. Yeah,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I think that, yes.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: And I think.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: That Norbert and Chloe really did do a wonderful job
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: of portraying these parents who have jobs and have jobs
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: bills to pay and have struggling and they're trying to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: find a way to keep their kids safe at the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: same time. And, and that is so universal. Like we
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: are all just, you know, like I say it, I
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: say it all the time and this is going to
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: sound insulting to some people and I don't mean it.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I really don't mean to be insulting, but I was like,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: there is no book you can read to prepare you
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: for this. Right. Like I, we read all the books and,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Trying to keep our kids safe and it's not how
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: it works.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: In practice, it.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Is not the same thing.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: No, you're feeling your way through the dark constantly and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: you're battling your.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Own demons and your own upbringing and.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: What you think was built into your hard drive as
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: to how to do this right.
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: And you're not able to. It's never a one-to-one. Right.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: And so it's.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Heartbreaking to watch what these parents went through on both sides.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Both sides.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: So Michelle's obsession with Glee is something that was not
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: invented for the series. She actually borrowed dialogue from the
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: show in her own messages.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: What did that tell you about her?
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: Very early on, it told us that she lived in
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: a fantasy. I mean, like she, she... you're correct. All
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: of that is real.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: All of that is supported in, in texts that we
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: were able to explore as well as in, in, in
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: some of the police investigations. And we, and by the way,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: like when I say she lives in fantasy, my sons
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: live in fantasy.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: Every day, right?
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Like Young people are trying to make sense of the
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: world and they look to media in all of its
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: forms to help form who they are and what they
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: believe the world should be.
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: And Michelle Carter didn't live in any more.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Fantasy with Glee and the idea and the romance of
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Glee and the possible love affairs that she was seeing as,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: and I mean this with all due respect to anybody who.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: Goes to Comic-Cons around the world, right?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: And anyone who comes up to me after screenings or
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: panels and, And, and, and like.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: Lives in this. I mean, geez, I mean what we're
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: doing today. Yep.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Right. In this is feeding a form of fantasy for
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: people of getting information about, about the world around them
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and how it exists and how we explore it through
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: what I do for a living as we're talking about today.
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: So she just lived in this fantasy world as a,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: as a young woman who was seeing, this is what
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: love looks like because of the media. And, you know,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I don't blame, I'm not blaming media.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: I'm part of it.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: But there is a responsibility to understand that people really
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: take these things seriously.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: And there's no judgment on that.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: So yeah, no, I take that she took it as
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: almost like a course in how do.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: You be romantic.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: So one of the most haunting questions is also, I think,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: one of the simplest, which is Michelle knew what Conrad
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: was doing. So why didn't she call his mother, the police,
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: or 911?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, therein lies the entire question of is
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: she good or is she evil or does it live
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: somewhere in between? I am going to share my feelings
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: on it, which is that I believe that she was
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: struggling with her mental health. I believe that she was
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: struggling with her self-image. I believe that she believed that
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: she was in love with this young man and that
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: she could look back on all of the times that
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: they had talked over months and months and months and
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: months and the couple of times that they saw each
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: other in real life.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: And I think that she could rationalize to herself, this.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Young, unformed brain that I've done everything that I could
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: do to try to make this, you know, Conrad happy
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and full. And maybe the thing that is really going
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: to make him love me the most, maybe the thing
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that will prove that I love him the most is
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: if I help him achieve this goal.
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: And that is simply my perspective.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: And I am positive that there are many people who
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: will listen to what I just said and think that
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: there is a callousness to that answer. Um, But I
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: have to look at it from a nuanced perspective. I
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: cannot look at it from a black and white.
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: Yes, of course.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: If one of my sons did this, absolutely. My first
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: thought is what the hell were you thinking? How the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: hell did you not call me? How the hell did
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: you not call the police? How did you not call
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the other parent? What is wrong with you? And that's
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the immediate gut reaction to anything like this.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: It's vile.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: It's vile on the surface. But if you spend any
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: time looking at it in greater depth, then you've got
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: to look at it through the perspective, the broken prism
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: of this teenage girl's mind and the history that they shared,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: quote unquote shared. And that makes it problematic to just say,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: why didn't you call the police? Why didn't you call
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the parent? Because there's history there that led her to
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: make this decision.
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: As wrong as it was.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, last two quick questions.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: One and a half.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: One, were you surprised that she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter?
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: And did you or anyone involved with the series ever
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: try to contact her?
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: We'll start with the second question first.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: No, we did not.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: We operated completely off of Jesse's research, um, for his
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: article and then, uh, our, our private research.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: Um, as, as well.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Um, because that to us felt like the sort of
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: most responsible way of exploring it sort of from, uh, um,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: without being influenced in some way.
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: Right. Um, We did reach out to the Roy family. Absolutely.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: And Lynn Roy in particular. We did speak to her.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: She was a part of it. But it was, you know,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it was not necessarily to frame story or character. It
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: was just so that she was a part of the process.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: And we're very appreciative of that. So that's part one.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: And part two is, was I surprised?
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: Not only was I.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Not surprised, but I actually support the decision. I think
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: she did something wrong. And I think that there are
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: consequences for making wrong decisions in life. And some of
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: those consequences means that your car keys get taken away.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: And some of those consequences means that your freedom gets
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: taken away. And it's something that Again, to just be
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: completely focused on me, it's something that I am trying
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: to impart on my two teenage sons is that there
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: are consequences. There's only so much that we can protect
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: you from. And Michelle Carter made a horribly wrong decision.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: And we can talk about all the reasons why she
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: made that decision. But she made the decision. And there
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: are consequences for those actions. And I think that she,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: I think she received a sentence that, I don't know
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: if the sentence was.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: Too light or too harsh, but I don't think she
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: could have just been let go for that.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I happen to agree with you.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: Again, your dream, this, I could, we could talk for hours.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: I wish that we could, but I'm going to They're
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: going to shut us down here.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: By the way, Universal keeps trying to get me to
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: make more true crime, so maybe we can do this again.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: The Girl from Plainville is streaming online, and everyone should
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: watch it. It's powerful and important. Patrick, I can't thank
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: you enough. Thank you so much.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: Right back at you. I appreciate you taking the time
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: to talk with me.