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The shocking events surrounding the deaths of the wife and son of Alex Murdaugh, a high-profile attorney in South Carolina, gripped the nation’s attention in 2021. Questions swirled: were they victims of retribution, or was there a more sinister family threat? The narrative took an unexpected turn as investigations pointed towards Murdaugh himself, unraveling a web of family power and influence.
Hulu has brought this intriguing saga to screens with its new limited series, “Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” now available for streaming. The series features Jason Clarke as Alex Murdaugh, with Patricia Arquette portraying his wife, Maggie. Johnny Berchtold and Will Harrison take on the roles of sons Paul and Buster, respectively. The storyline draws from the diligent reporting of local journalist Mandy Matney, whose podcast on the case gained widespread attention. Matney also serves as an executive producer and is depicted by Brittany Snow in the series.
Currently, Murdaugh is serving a life sentence for the murders of his wife and son Paul, alongside convictions for various financial crimes.
Mirror to the psyche
To accurately portray Murdaugh, Clarke immersed himself in the trial’s audio recordings before watching the video footage. “Listening allowed me to focus solely on his voice, capturing his thoughts and tone,” Clarke explained. “I absorbed it as though I were him.”
Clarke also tapped into Murdaugh’s physical presence and reported poor diet as a reflection of his mental state, often depicting the character in scenes where he is eating.
“That stomach needed to be filled constantly,” said Clarke, who compared Murdaugh to “a great white shark. He can’t stop moving. He has to move. And that’s like physically, emotionally and psychologically.” Arquette interpreted his insatiable appetite as someone “starving to death.”
“You know, ‘I need that attention. I need your approval. I need you to like me. I need you to think I’m smart. I need some more money. I need love. I need drugs. I need this. I need to get something over on you. I need to trick somebody,” Arquette said.
An interest in human behavior
“Death in the Family” isn’t the first acting job Arquette has had based on a true crime. She also starred in “Escape at Dannemora” and “The Act” and says she’s “always been interested” in the genre and what leads people to make the choices they do.
“We have this weird species that does these things,” Arquette said. To learn more about Maggie, she turned to Matney’s research.
“She was able to give me little things,” explained Arquette. “What kind of makeup Maggie wore, what she would make for breakfast, and how she would carry her cash in a plastic bag in her purse. Just little idiosyncratic things.”
Arquette began to see Maggie as a supporting player to her family. “She loved a family photo like a trophy. ‘We made it. Here we are. Look at my beautiful family,’ but the videos I had access to, she’s the photographer, the support system. The documenter of everyone else’s life.”
Son Paul Murdaugh had his own legal troubles. In 2019. he was driving a boat that crashed into a local bridge and killed one of its passengers, Mallory Beach, and injured several others. He was charged with felony boating under the influence. Berchtold was intent on playing Paul as a three-dimensional person.
“I think when we consume true crime or we hear a case, we go, ‘OK, that’s the villain.’ It can be very black and white, of course, but that’s not life. That’s not humanity,” explained Berchtold. “There’s so much going on with him. Look at the environment he was raised in. Something that I really wanted to hold on to, that I found really fascinating, is there has been documentation of his personality and his friendliness and his heart, which I found really surprising when you just look at headlines.”
Power and influence
Co-creator and showrunner Michael D. Fuller grew up in South Carolina and immediately recognized the good ‘ol boys mentality ingrained in its culture, which is likely why the Murdaughs had so much power and influence for generations. He felt “a draw in wanting to dramatize and adapt it with as much reverence and responsibility and respect to the place and the people.”
Matney spent many sleepless nights diving deep into the Murdaughs. She sees the release of “Death in the Family” as the end of an era in her personal story but not to the Murdaugh’s web of corruption.
“It will never be over. We’ve all come to terms with that,” said Matney, citing the recent conviction and sentencing of Murdaugh associate Russell Laffitte for fraud related to the case. “A lot of what I went through while investigating this case was a dark chapter for me. For a while, I just didn’t want to talk about it. But now this has made me feel so positive about the experience, and it’s been like the best way to close this chapter of my life.”
There’s also hope that a takeaway for viewers could be about the importance of local journalism.
“A journalist can go up against the grain,” said Matney, “even if her boss is and everybody’s telling her not to. I think that that’s a story that people need to hear right now. And I think with a lot of media, it’s just really easy to fall into line and to do what they want you to do. But this is a story about not doing that and where you can go.”