CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As Antonio Campos developed his idea for making a dramatized version of the Michael Peterson murder case, the man who defended Peterson — Charlotte attorney David Rudolf — says he tried to be as helpful to the process as possible.
Whatever Campos had in mind, Rudolf wanted it to be accurate.
So in 2009, Rudolf agreed to meet with Campos and answer all of the filmmaker’s questions, many of which pertained to Rudolf’s significant involvement in filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s “The Staircase,” the award-winning documentary series made about the North Carolina-centric true-crime saga.
Last year, Rudolf says, he offered to help ensure that Campos’s scripts were accurate as they pertained to lawyers and the law; but Campos declined the assistance.
Meanwhile, however, actor Michael Stuhlbarg was interested Rudolf’s insights, and spent time in Charlotte meeting with and asking questions of the attorney in preparation for playing Rudolf in HBO Max’s limited series, also titled “The Staircase.”
On Thursday, the streaming service dropped the last episode of the eight-part series, which — as you know if you’ve read all (or at least most) of the previous roundups of his reactions that we’ve put together — Rudolf has found incredibly irksome because of its tendency to play fast and loose with the facts.
So we had to ask, after the credits rolled on the finale: If he could go back in time and have those meetings with Campos and Stuhlbarg again, knowing what he knows about the HBO series now, would Rudolf have handled either of them any differently?
“I think he was legitimately interested in learning about me, and about what made me do the things I do,” Rudolf says of Stuhlbarg. So no, I would treat him exactly the same way. I would have hoped that he would have been able in some way to say to Antonio, ‘Wait a minute. That just didn’t happen that way. I’ve got my notes here. I spoke to David. You ought not show him meeting Michael in a diner eating a pastrami sandwich. I mean, he told me how they met.’
“But maybe that’s asking too much of an actor. I’m not in that world, so I don’t know.”
As for Campos ...
“I told him that what I cared about most was the portrayal of the defense lawyer,” Rudolf continues. “Not just me — (any) defense lawyer. But he played into some of the stereotypes. That I abandoned Michael when he didn’t have any money. That Michael had to sell all his furniture to pay for the appeal. The dedication that most defense lawyers have to their clients? That was totally undermined.
“Look, I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, but I spent enormous time and energy devoted to Michael’s case. So to intimate that I really didn’t much care — that I was just his mouthpiece and interested in making money, and I abandoned him — it fed into all those stereotypes. So I think it’s really unfortunate.
“And I never dreamed that the whole format of this movie was gonna be an attack on Jean and Sophie,” he says, referring to docuseries director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Sophie Brunet, an editor of the docuseries who became romantically involved with Peterson after the trial was over. “It just never occurred to me.”
“If he had said, ‘Listen, here’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna write in here that Jean and Sophie were really biased, and that the documentary was actually designed to help Michael,’ I would have said, ‘Go (expletive) yourself. That’s just not true.’ So if I could go back ... yeah, I’d change my approach.
“But it’s sort of like the owl theory. It never crossed my mind.”
Here is a curated selection of Rudolf’s reactions to other key moments in the series finale of HBO Max’s “The Staircase.”
‘It struck me as not who I am’
As seen on TV: When Peterson (Colin Firth) enters the courtroom for his 2011 retrial hearing, Rudolf (Stuhlbarg) greets him by just gazing at his client for several seconds while wearing a warm, closed-mouth smile on his face.
The real Rudolf’s reaction: As the scene unfolded in real-time, Rudolf said, “What a doofus he looks like.” After the episode had ended, Rudolf added, “I don’t want to criticize his facial expression. It just struck me as sort of not who I am.”
But in general, he says, “At least in this episode I think I was portrayed reasonably accurately in terms of what I said and how I acted in the courtroom. So that’s good.”
More on Jean and Sophie
As seen on TV: During Peterson’s 2011 retrial hearing, de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) flashes an approving, almost-celebratory smile after filming the testimony of private investigator Ron Guerette (Robert Crayton), who has just helped Rudolf discredit N.C. State Bureau of Investigation agent Duane Deaver (Myke Holmes).
De Lestrade also is shown dining with the Peterson family as it celebrates Michael being granted a new trial. He has no camera or crew with him, so the implication is that he’s there as a family friend.
Meanwhile, in the 2017-set scenes, having just wrapped a private interview with de Lestrade on the day of his final court date, Michael Peterson turns to the filmmaker and says, “Jean, we’re friends, right?” De Lestrade nods several times while replying, “Hmm.” Then, moments after taking the Alford plea, Peterson locks eyes with de Lestrade as subdued, reflective smiles creep across both of their faces.
But despite the fact that he is finally free to move from Durham, alone together in his apartment Peterson tells Brunet (Juliette Binoche) that he’s not ready to go to Paris with her. “This is all happening so fast,” he tells her. “Too fast.” An argument ensues, with Brunet contending that Peterson hasn’t shown enough acknowledgment of and appreciation for her support of him. Ultimately, he flies into a rage, screaming at her, “I’m done!” She leaves in tears, marking the apparent end of their yearslong relationship.
The real Rudolf’s reaction: In regards to the depiction of de Lestrade as being Peterson’s friend, and as being sympathetic to Peterson, Rudolf says, “it was unnecessary, and unfair. I mean, clearly they were attacking the integrity of the documentary. There’s no other way to sugarcoat that.”
As for the aforementioned scenes involving Brunet and Peterson at and after the Alford plea, Rudolf says: “It continues the false portrayal of Sophie, which I think is really unfortunate.”
(In an interview with The Charlotte Observer last month, de Lestrade sided with Rudolf in asserting that HBO Max’s series has falsely characterized the real-life Brunet’s involvement in the editing of the documentary, as well as his own motives during the making the original “Staircase.”)
“So many people,” Rudolf says, sighing, “will watch this and walk away with the wrong impression of Jean and Sophie.”
More on the Alford plea
As seen on TV: Having spent multiple previous episodes telling Rudolf that he wouldn’t say the word “guilty” as it pertained to killing his wife, Peterson finally says it — as part of an Alford plea deal at his final court date in 2017. On screen, Peterson takes more than 15 seconds to respond after the judge asks him, “To the charge of voluntary manslaughter in the death of Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette), how do you plead?”
The real Rudolf’s reaction: (Rudolf made these remarks after Episode 7, but we saved them for this week so as not to spoil things for viewers who might not have known whether Peterson wound up taking the Alford plea.) “He always said to me, ‘To settle this case, there are two prerequisites: No. 1 I will never say I killed Kathleen. And No. 2, I will never go back into a jail or a prison for one second. Those are my two requirements.’ That’s what I had to work with ... and both happened.
“Look, it took some discussion. As it should. I mean, I’m not there to force somebody to do something. ... At the end of the day, I think what finally convinced him were his children and me saying, ‘Michael, the people who think you’re guilty, even if you go to trial and you are found not guilty — if you go to trial and you win — the people who think you’re guilty will still think you’re guilty. The people who think you’re innocent will still think you’re innocent. So what is the point? What are you gaining by doing this? And what’s the risk?’ That was the winning argument. As it should have been.
“Would I have liked to retry the case? Yeah! I mean, how much vindication would that be for me. Right? You keep out the Germany stuff, you keep out (his sexuality), you try this case, we now decimate Deaver — what do they have? So from my personal perspective ... I wanted to retry the case. ... But that wasn’t in his interest.”
‘Did he do it? Did he not do it?’
As seen on TV: De Lestrade shows Brunet the footage of Peterson explaining that he lied about having told his wife of his sexuality and his affairs. Brunet is in disbelief. But she still doesn’t want to believe Michael killed Kathleen. “He didn’t. He couldn’t,” Brunet says, as de Lestrade’s eyes fill with tears and he sighs, with a shake of his head and the slightest shrug.
In the final minutes of the series, there’s another imagining of Kathleen’s last moments alive. She and Michael are together by the pool, talking mundanely about the kids. She gets up to leave, but before she does, she asks him, gently, “Why didn’t you tell me?” As he tries to calmly explain, he says, “People don’t actually know who they’re with.” Michael closes his eyes as he reclines in his chaise lounge by the pool, and Kathleen is seen — this time with tears in her eyes and clearly distressed — mouthing what appears to be the same line: “Why didn’t you tell me?,” as the musical score swells.
Michael is then shown putting up family photos in his apartment as he leaves a message for one of his kids to tell them he’s not going to Paris. The final shot is of him sitting on his bed, wearing a look that suggests that maybe, just maybe, he got away with murder.
The real Rudolf’s reaction: “He’s a complicated person,” Rudolf says of Peterson. “And I don’t think that’s a bad thing in any way. He’s not easy to get to know, really. So, to the extent they left him a little bit as an enigma ... with lots of different sides to him, that’s true. And I get the dramatization of, you know, ‘Did he do it? Did he not do it?’ Bringing people back and forth through that, the ambiguity of what happened, and the complexity of the characters, Michael and Kathleen and the kids — that’s fair.
“I’ve always believed he’s innocent. I still do. The murder scenario never made sense to me. But I don’t know. No one knows but Michael and Kathleen.”
A parting shot
“I haven’t recommended it to anybody,” Rudolf says of HBO’s show. “And interestingly enough, there have been a number of people who have told me, ‘I watched the first few episodes of the HBO series, then I decided, I’m gonna go look at the real ‘Staircase.’ And I never went back to the HBO series.’
“The problem is that a lot of people who watch this HBO series will just accept it as truth, and won’t even bother going and looking at the documentary. But for anybody who watches this, and then goes and watches the documentary, they know that a lot of the HBO series is false. It’s just obvious that it’s just not true. But there’s gonna be a lot of people who just don’t do that.”
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