BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ It was a story too delicious to believe. A wealthy career woman living in Southern California met the man of her dreams on the internet.
Their romance rivaled Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's, though with far less publicity. But the relationship slowly began to unravel when her family noticed disturbing eccentricities in her dashing love.
The story of the fairy tale romance and its bloody demise first appeared as a podcast by journalist Christopher Goffard and later ran as a series in the Los Angeles Times.
Now Bravo elevates it to high visual drama when "Dirty John" premieres Sunday. Connie Britton plays the elegant Debra Newell, a single mother with a thriving interior design business. Eric Bana is the enigmatic John Meehan in the eight-part series.
Britton ("Nashville," "Friday Night Lights") says she got to explore the subject with the real Debra Newell. "We've actually spent a good deal of time together," she says.
"And I really like her a lot. But it's been such ... a new experience for me to sit down and really get to ask her questions and get to ask the character that I'm playing questions. It's a very unique, privileged experience. And also it's helping give so much insight into the story in a way that maybe we weren't able to experience in the podcast."
Britton, 51, says it was critical that she understand how such an intelligent person as Newell could be flimflammed so easily. "Ultimately, we're telling the story of how a con man can be so effective. And so it's important to make Debra relatable so that we can all see ourselves in her, and not just say, 'Oh, well, that's because she's this,' or 'That's because she's that,'" she says.
To portray the devious Meehan was another story, says Australian actor Bana, who's known for film work in movies like "Munich," "The Time Traveler's Wife" and "Chopper." "Whilst there's a lot of factual information about John, I actually find him really mysterious," says Bana.
"And so there's a lot of stuff about him that I don't want to know. Because ultimately, I think, when you're dealing with something that's based in reality, you can either choose to do something that's 100 percent traceable to the exact facts of how they were _ which can potentially be a little bit boring to watch _ or you can try and come up with something that has a sense of that person, that might be more interesting."
The challenge he says, is Meehan was not just one guy who told whopping lies, but a "type" that exists all over the world.
"It's not him individually that's fascinating. It's his behavior and that type of character," says Bana, 50. "And I think that's why people find the podcast so interesting, because he's such an unusual person. So I think there's some generalities there. And most definitely, studying how sociopaths behave and think and that sort of thing was more important, or as important to me as it was to just focus on specific events that occurred in his life and kind of put them in some sort of memory bank. Because I think it's important to come up with a character for the show that's a little bit further developed than what the facts are that are available."
Coming up with a character like the real John Meehan proved daunting. First of all, the audience had to like him, says director Jeffrey Reiner. "At the start of the production, I would walk around the production office and tell the whole crew that 'I love John. John's a great guy.' And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. But it was our way in, because if we know from the get-go that he'd be smarmy or swarthy or icky, then we don't have a show," he says.
"And I really do think that by the first episode, I hope that people are going to root for this couple to work. Because there is this incredible chemistry between them. And so through Connie's character's eyes, John ... comes across as just a fantastic, lovable guy. And their chemistry is fantastic. And in casting Eric, it's a really hard role to cast, because you need somebody who can bring that kind of sense of good nature and joy and giving her something that she needs. And then, later on, the Dirty John rears his head."
STAN LEE'S EARLY SCRIBBLINGS
So sorry that Stan Lee, the mastermind of Marvel Comics, died last Monday. Although he suffered some legal problems in the last couple of years, when I last spoke with him he was still the feisty, humble and ingratiating leader he'd always been. He described how he first got interested in comics.
"When I was about 7 or 8 years old I used to draw stories for myself," he said. "But I couldn't really draw so ... I would take a sheet of paper and draw a horizontal line. And that was the horizon. Then I would put little stick figures that I drew on that line, and I would just have a row of stick figures doing things.
"One would be running, jumping, punching another one in the nose. And I told myself little stories with these stick figures. I never thought anything of it but I guess in my own way, I was doing comics. I'm a writer basically. I draw. In the Army I did posters and things. But I'm not a good artist. I can get away with doing a cartoon, that's about it."
BEN STILLER DIRECTS COMPELLING SERIES
If the Showtime series "Escape at Dannemora" seems real, that's because it's as true-to-life as Ben Stiller can make it. You don't think of Stiller as a director of serious drama. In fact, he and writers Michael Tolkin and Brett Johnson had given up on the idea of creating a TV series about the miraculous escape of two murderers from the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. It seemed too complex, and there was not enough accessible information about how it happened. Then the inspector general issued a 170-page report about the daring breakout. Stiller and Johnson emailed each other the day the report appeared online.
"You could just click on the PDF and read it," recalls Stiller. "And we both read it, and we're, like, 'Oh my god, this is the novel. This is the source material for this thing, only it's real.' And we said, 'Why don't we start from this, scratch everything else, and let's go from this and make everything as real as possible.'
"And that was the basis for the process from then on. Then we got into the transcripts. We met with the inspector general. We went up to Dannemora. We met the district attorney up there. We started to meet people involved. We met David Sweat (one of the escaped convicts.) We met a lot of people involved and were able to try to just infuse it with as much of the real stuff as possible all the way through the process."
The result is a captivating and horrifying view of both prison life and the escape. Starring Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano as the killers, the series also stars Patricia Arquette as their prison-employee accomplice. In an unbridled and gutsy characterization, you won't see a better performance than Arquette's this year.
KURT RUSSELL PLAYS SANTA
Kurt Russell has snagged a new gig: He's Santa Claus in Netflix's new movie "The Christmas Chronicles," premiering Thursday. Russell creates a distinct Santa, says the director. He even grew a beard for the role.
Russell, who was a kid actor, remembers visiting sets with his actor dad. "I went on sets and saw him having fun," he recalls, "I did see and remember he was home a lot of the time. And I thought that was a hell of a way to make a living. It pays good and I always thought I could do it, and I liked putting on a show for my parents. I liked making them laugh and respond as an audience. As I got older I transferred my feelings of wanting to give the folks a good show into giving everybody a good show. I still like the idea."
