When the Alex Murdaugh case started to unfold in 2023, Erin Lee Carr was approached by several companies interested in a documentary about the horrific murders. Carr was the perfect pick for a true crime case as sensational and disturbing as that of a father killing his wife and son, having previously directed and produced HBO’s “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth vs. Michelle Carter.” But when it came to the Murdaughs, she had another idea in mind.
“What could a scripted project about this do? It’s one of the most twisted and shocking murders ever to penetrate the zeitgeist. I wanted to figure out — along with my showrunner and co-creator Michael D. Fuller — what happened inside that house?” Carr told TheWrap.
That’s the question Hulu’s “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” attempts to answer. Told over the course of eight episodes, the miniseries starring Jason Clarke and Patricia Arquette depicts a family so powerful they’re practically royalty in their small South Carolina community. But when the actions of the family’s youngest son, Paul Murdaugh (Johnny Berchtold), result in the death of a young woman, that power is stripped away. The series itself is structured like a boiling pot of water, putting more and more pressure on patriarch Alex Murdaugh until he explodes. That, the series argues, is the reason why Murdaugh did the unthinkable to his wife and son.
“There’s something fundamental about the place, people and dynamics that would incubate a family like this,” Fuller told TheWrap. “There are still elements of a dynasty that are at play [in South Carolina] in a way that they’re not necessarily in other parts of the country — a name being passed down over generations and the power that’s associated with it.”
For Fuller, his interest in the case was more personal. A native of South Carolina, he understood regional aspects and pressures that were largely brushed over by the larger media. He witnessed the world Alex Murdaugh occupied, one where he was essentially a king able to get away with most crimes due to his family’s wealth and influence. However, the regional sway the family had wasn’t all because of nefarious string pulling.
“Part of [the Murdaugh family’s] power was they really helped a lot of people. There were obviously lots of abuses of that, but we heard lots of stories about Alex paying off people’s mortgages,” Fuller said. “Who knows what his intentions were in doing that.”
Fuller also understood the immense pressure to succeed that came with this family’s power and how it could be dangerous for someone like Paul Murdaugh.
“He was someone who was rowdy in an environment that doesn’t really support getting help when you might need it for alcohol abuse,” Fuller said. “The culture itself is so fundamental to understanding this story, and it’s one I have lived in for most of my life.”
Nailing the culture was integral to getting this series right. In order to do this, both Clarke and Arquette practiced accents that would appear in the South Carolina lowcountry, a dialect that’s different than upstate or the midlands. Casting director John Papsidera, alongside local casting directors Erica S. Bream and Amanda Lenker Doyle, also tried to employ as many local actors as possible.
“We were in Atlanta, and so we were shooting the South for the South and casting the South as the South,” Fuller said.
At the end of the day, Carr and Fuller simply want audiences to walk away with a better understanding of this horrific crime.
“We got to speak to people that were inside the house knowing what happened and utilizing the incredible reporting of Mandy Matney, who had literally been thinking about this the longest,” Carr said, referencing the host of the “Murdaugh Murders Podcast.”
The goal is for audiences to see Maggie and Paul Murdaugh as more than a murdered wife and a son and portray what Fuller calls the “emotional truth” of these two victims.
“The vast amount of coverage depicted Maggie and Paul as perpetrators before their death. They died in these extremely tragic circumstances. So the way to tell the story with compassion was to add context,” Carr said. “We are, hopefully, the definitive experience about this. We’ve had so much time to think about it, it will be reflective of what happened.”
The finale episode of “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” premieres on Hulu Nov. 19.
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