\n<\/p>\n
These legal and ethical scuffles extend to movies too. Just last week, a lawyer for Donald Trump<\/strong> accused<\/a> the filmmakers behind forthcoming Trump biopic The Apprentice<\/em> (written by VF<\/em>\u2019s Gabriel Sherman<\/strong>) of defamation and election interference, issuing a cease and desist letter. The producers released a statement in response: \u201cThe film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president. We want everyone to see it and then decide.\u201d<\/p>\n The deluge of true-crime scripted series and dramatizations of recent historical events suggests that viewers crave the unexpected twists and raw authenticity of real stories. But they also expect a smooth narrative. When I spoke to When They See Us<\/em> writer Michael Starrbury<\/strong><\/a> back in 2019, he talked about trying to stay true to \u201cthe spirit\u201d of Korey Wise<\/strong>\u2019s story in the final episode while ensuring that it was digestible for a mass audience. \u201cYou don\u2019t have a lot of time and you have to make choices on how much time you want to see someone suffering in prison,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you do compress the time and consolidate characters. Those are things that happen naturally in a narrative versus a documentary.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a delicate balancing act for the writers trying to wrangle unruly human experience into a svelte storyline that holds the viewer\u2019s attention. \u201cHollywood executives want a heightened sense of drama\u2014the OMG-crazy version of the story\u2014and a clear progression of events,\u201d says the showrunner of a successful true-crime series. \u201cMost of the time, our lives are not structured like a screenplay, and sometimes there\u2019s stuff that\u2019s internal.\u201d But TV execs demand big external events, the showrunner says, even if reality didn\u2019t actually unfold that way. \u201cIn a classic fictional mystery story, there are red herrings and alternative suspects. In real life there is only one person who committed the murder and if you suggest that other people might have been involved or done it and you cannot back that up, you are defaming them.\u201d Sometimes executives might push for a clear villain, but the showrunner says, \u201cit can be really tricky, because people often don\u2019t do things for a single motive.\u201d<\/p>\n Baby Reindeer<\/em> is a particularly fascinating case\u2014a first-person account of a sexual assault survivor struggling with a stalker. Do we really want to create an environment in which a creator cannot dramatize this complex, traumatic experience? \u201cI personally wouldn\u2019t be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story,\u201d Netflix UK policy chief Benjamin King<\/strong> said during testimony<\/a> at a parliamentary hearing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a morass, because there are no easy answers,\u201d the showrunner says. \u201c[Viewers] understand on a certain level that these things are fictionalized, but they will still assume that the story bears some relationship to the facts. So if you wander too far off the garden path, you are potentially ruining someone\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n Studios are legally responsible for the shows they create, and they have guards in place to keep reality-inspired dramas on solid ground. Dahvi Waller,<\/strong> creator of FX\u2019s historical limited series Mrs. America,<\/em> says she did enormous amounts of research and kept backup for every detail the writers included about real-life figures. Once the network approved the scripts and before the show went into production, she says, \u201cA group of lawyers were combing through the scripts and then we had to annotate them, [explaining,] where did we get this from? Where [did] we get that from? They were very, very thorough.\u201d<\/p>\n Another way that studios try to insulate themselves from legal backlash is by purchasing the \u201clife rights\u201d from the real people behind fictionalized characters. But it turns out that the term life rights<\/em> is misleading. People don\u2019t really own<\/em> their life story. Producers can and do use material that\u2019s in the public record. So the life rights contract is an agreement not to sue the studio for defamation if you don\u2019t like the end product\u2014a way of buying their support or silence. A life rights contract could also dissuade other studios from buying competing projects based on the same story.<\/p>\n Is the real person being fictionalized a public figure or an ordinary, private person like Harvey? That also makes a difference, at least in terms of the legal ramifications. \u201cIf it\u2019s a public figure who is suing because of something that\u2019s been said about them or the way that they\u2019ve been portrayed, then that public figure has to show clear and convincing evidence that the defendants\u2014the writer, the network, whoever\u2014made false statements about them, knowing they were false, or being reckless as to their falsity,\u201d says Alexander Rufus-Isaacs,<\/strong> a lawyer with extensive experience in this area who currently represents Rachel DeLoache Williams. Ideally you\u2019d find a smoking gun, like an email that says something like: \u201c\u2018Hey, we are portraying Mr. X as a child molester, but we know that he isn\u2019t,\u2019\u201d says Rufus-Isaacs. \u201cIn reality, you very rarely find anything quite as definitive, so you\u2019re left drawing inferences.\u201d For a private figure, he says, it\u2019s a much lower bar: \u201cThey only have to establish that the [defendants] were negligent, that they didn\u2019t research the thing properly.\u201d<\/p>\n Although he\u2019s not involved in the Baby Reindeer<\/em> case, Rufus-Isaacs sighs when I ask him about it. \u201cThe question I ask creatives is this: Don\u2019t you feel some responsibility to the person you\u2019re talking about?\u201d he says. \u201cIf you\u2019re not going to be entirely accurate and you\u2019re going to be nasty about them, don\u2019t you have a duty to disguise them and protect them?\u201d They changed Harvey\u2019s name, but Rufus-Isaacs believes they kept too many identifying biographical details. Instead of having fictional Martha work in law the way the real Fiona Harvey does, he says, \u201cMake her a couturier or something!\u201d<\/p>\n