Speaker 1: I am joined today by David Sloan and Mariel Pearson.
Speaker 1: I know who you are, and you guys are huge
Speaker 1: advocates of betrayal, But can you tell the audience who
Speaker 1: you are in relationship to the show? David?
Speaker 2: Why don't you go first?
Speaker 3: Sure, I'm the creative lead for ABC News long Form,
Speaker 3: which comprises ABC News Studios, twenty twenty, Nightline, and Impact
Speaker 3: our other news magazines.
Speaker 4: So I'm the creative lead over content, and I'm Muriel Pearson.
Speaker 4: I'm the executive producer over here overseeing your wonderful show, Andrea.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I work really closely with David on a
Speaker 4: lot of the things that he's working on. But I
Speaker 4: work really closely with your producer, John Hirsch on making
Speaker 4: beautiful television out of your amazing podcast.
Speaker 2: How did you guys get into true crime?
Speaker 4: David is the king of true crime. I'm passing that
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have been doing crime since I worked
Speaker 3: on twenty five years ago or maybe a little longer,
Speaker 3: and I became the executive producer for twenty years. And
Speaker 3: it's ferreting out these stories of not only the most notorious,
Speaker 3: and it's it's like the seven deadly sins. I mean,
Speaker 3: why crimes are committed. It's jealousy, it's envy, it's angry.
Speaker 3: These are universal kinds of feelings in humanity. But the
Speaker 3: eighth deadly sin is betrayal. It's almost the eighths deadly sin.
Speaker 3: It's not in there along with gluttney and sloth and
Speaker 3: all of those other ones, but it really is one
Speaker 3: of the deadly sins. And again it has a commonality
Speaker 3: where someone everywhere on earth has been betrayed by someone
Speaker 3: big or small.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious what made you guys interested in taking
Speaker 1: the weekly series and converting it to TV. Obviously we've
Speaker 1: done Stacy's story, Jens story, and Ashley's story.
Speaker 2: Yes, what made you interested in the weekly format?
Speaker 3: It's been remarkable. These limited series on Hulu have been
Speaker 3: remarkably received and keep adding viewers all the time in
Speaker 3: terms of driving subscriptions on Hulu. And then we just thought, like,
Speaker 3: why are we doing this for the network.
Speaker 4: But you know what Drea is is really remarkable about
Speaker 4: this is we all ask about how transferable these kinds
Speaker 4: of stories and the popularity is between platforms, and I
Speaker 4: think what we've learned from your show and a couple
Speaker 4: others is with a very very powerful podcast that translates
Speaker 4: into network, that translates into viewers on Hulu, and it
Speaker 4: is astonishing to me because there are very few things
Speaker 4: that migrate cross platform. With the success of Betrayal, and
Speaker 4: we've seen it happen time in the games, certainly with
Speaker 4: the Hulu series and with the network series as well.
Speaker 4: Your listeners, your audience are tuned in to watch these
Speaker 4: stories as they evolved on television series.
Speaker 1: There are very loyal community and so it's really cool
Speaker 1: to see them support every phase of Betrayal, whether it
Speaker 1: be when we went from limited to the weekly and
Speaker 1: then when we launched the show on Hulu. So it's
Speaker 1: really cool to see the feedback from the listeners and
Speaker 1: then advocate for the show and for the storytellers. What
Speaker 1: are some of the stories that you're looking forward to
Speaker 1: the most this season? I mean, obviously I have my darlings,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious which ones are yours.
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to the abduction, I mean, where do
Speaker 3: you get the story of First of all, the best
Speaker 3: stories have the perpetrator or the husband as I will
Speaker 3: call him. He's really a perpetrator. The best villains are
Speaker 3: the ones hiding in play site. So this guy is
Speaker 3: a devoted father, he's a financial advisor who his clients trust,
Speaker 3: he's an elder at their church. And to think that
Speaker 3: he also would get involved in abduction and ransom unproofed
Speaker 3: dungeon with victims, it almost shocks the conscience. And it
Speaker 3: is really the ones who are hiding in plain sight
Speaker 3: that are truly remarkable and the most frightening.
Speaker 5: What about you, Maryel I am looking forwards to Morgan
Speaker 5: because Morgan is so spunky. Morgan is successful, Morgan is
Speaker 5: not going to let anybody take her down. Morgan fights back,
Speaker 5: as many.
Speaker 4: Of these women do. You don't have to be victimized,
Speaker 4: you don't have to take it from somebody. You can
Speaker 4: do something about it. And it is fascinating to me
Speaker 4: how a woman like Morgan kind of shows you a
Speaker 4: little bit of the heart of darkness. Because one little
Speaker 4: theme that I've seen emerge from this series is a
Speaker 4: lot of men who really didn't feel comfortable with their wives'
Speaker 4: success that they really who knows at what point they
Speaker 4: decided they wanted to take that down, But it was
Speaker 4: a power thing. It wasn't just a betrayal thing. Which
Speaker 4: is already a awful enough but it really raised questions
Speaker 4: in my mind about what the ultimate, deeper, darker motivation
Speaker 4: of some of these men was. Were they trying to
Speaker 4: take that woman down.
Speaker 2: It's such a great point.
Speaker 1: When you watch Crystal Harris's episode, you will find similarities
Speaker 1: between Sean Harris, which is Chrissel's husband, and Rodney Morgan's
Speaker 1: ex husband. Different scenarios. Christl was the breadwinner, she was working,
Speaker 1: he was taking care of the kids, and then he
Speaker 1: experiences loss and he starts to change the same story
Speaker 1: is very similar in Morgan's case.
Speaker 2: It's really to see things just you know, to see.
Speaker 1: Those like themes come up in these perpetrators and the
Speaker 1: offenders is so fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yes, the one thing I was going to.
Speaker 1: Say off your point David about these perpetrators hiding in
Speaker 1: plain sight is these stories are hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 1: I remember when Donielle emailed us. I think her email
Speaker 1: was like three sentences long, and it was just like
Speaker 1: big fan of the podcast. You know, really quick in
Speaker 1: and out. You would have no idea what that woman
Speaker 1: went through. She just heard the show, she wrote in
Speaker 1: and you would never know that her husband at one
Speaker 1: point had dungeon in a random rental property. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a real indication of you just don't know what
Speaker 1: someone has gone through or what they're going through.
Speaker 3: I'm so full of admiration to the class group because
Speaker 3: what you have done with the podcast, and we've been
Speaker 3: lucky enough to meet you and to collaborate with you
Speaker 3: on the on the network and on Hulu, is that
Speaker 3: you've created a sisterhood. Yeah, you've created a sisterhood not
Speaker 3: of just listeners, but women who can can bear witness
Speaker 3: two stories like the other listeners. And it's it's very,
Speaker 3: very impressive and rare. And the fact that it can
Speaker 3: keeps regenerating and really snowballing into almost this sort of
Speaker 3: movement of women sharing these stories and taking power and
Speaker 3: empowering themselves. It's just this collective strain that I really
Speaker 3: admire all of you for bringing us about.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1: That means a lot to me.
Speaker 4: What I kind of love about this series is true
Speaker 4: crime in the past has taken a little bit of
Speaker 4: criticism because it's been too much about the crime, the
Speaker 4: relations of the crime or the perpetrator. This brings it
Speaker 4: firmly into the space of the victims, of the people
Speaker 4: to whom the crime is being perpetrated on. But I've
Speaker 4: got to say that there's something incredibly emotionally compelling about
Speaker 4: constantly reframing the crime within that context between a woman's
Speaker 4: inside of a woman's point of view. Well though I
Speaker 4: shouldn't just say a woman, because I mean we should
Speaker 4: tease it a little little bit.
Speaker 2: Andrea that we have a man we do betrayal coming up,
Speaker 2: We do Ramone, and he was the first man that
Speaker 2: we had on the weekly, and that was a watershed moment, obviously,
Speaker 2: aside from Tyler on the you know, the Hulu doc
Speaker 2: it was I think Tyler really.
Speaker 1: Set a stage for men to participate in betrayal because
Speaker 1: I do think that there's a lot there is a
Speaker 1: level of shame in every storyteller where they feel they
Speaker 1: are the only one that got duped, they're the only
Speaker 1: one that didn't see it. And I think for male
Speaker 1: storytellers it's really hard in particular, and ramone man, is
Speaker 1: he not just so strong and willing and just to
Speaker 1: stand on his two feet and say this is what
Speaker 1: happened to me. I am so grateful to the both
Speaker 1: of you for believing in Betrayal and just being a
Speaker 1: fan of the show and the stories, and so I
Speaker 1: can't thank you enough. Muriel, do you want to tell
Speaker 1: the audience where they can find betrayal secrets and lies?
Speaker 4: Betrayal Secrets and Lies coming to the ABC News Network
Speaker 4: near you Sundays, ten o'clock Eastern Standard Time, streaming on
Speaker 4: Hulu and Disney Plus. Afterwards, watch us and be part
Speaker 4: of that wonderful sisterhood that David was talking about.
Speaker 2: Thank you, guys, I really appreciate you taking the time