The Staircase, HBO and Sky's new true-crime drama about Michael Peterson and the investigation into the death of his wife, is well underway and has viewers well and truly gripped.
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But did you know that in the middle of Michael's 15-year fight to clear his name, he found love again? To make things even more interesting, the woman who he began seeing was actually the editor of the original The Staircase documentary. Find out more here…
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Shortly after Michael Peterson was arrested in 2001, French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade began documenting the case - and followed events up until Michael's eventual Alford plea in 2017. Working on the documentary as an editor was Sophie Brunet - however, it's important to note that she was located in Paris while Lestrade and the rest of his team had come to Durham in North Carolina to cover the case.
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The two didn't actually meet in person until 2004 when Michael was serving time behind bars, having been found guilty of Kathleen's murder by a jury. According to French outlet Le Monde, between 2004 and 2008, she travelled to Durham 17 times to visit him in prison as the two had struck up a romantic relationship.
Sophie is played by Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche in the series
Le Monde reports that Michael's guilty conviction actually came as a shock to Sophie, who, after reviewing the documentary footage, was left convinced that he was innocent. She decided to reach out to him and began writing to him in prison.
Following this, she divorced her husband and by 2011, it appears that the two had gone public with their relationship. In episode ten of the docuseries, Sophie can be seen sitting beside Michael and his family during one of his hearings.
Michael has defended their relationship
However, the two have always denied that the documentary - which provided footage that helped to overturn his murder conviction - was not influenced by the pair's romantic relationship, which only ended around 2017.
Colin Firth plays Michael in the new drama
Giving an exclusive interview to the British magazine show This Morning recently, Michael said: "To suggest that she had skewered the documentary to make it look that way, no, she didn't do that," he said before adding: "And besides that, Jean, who was the director never would have allowed that. That's questioning both of their integrities."
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During the interview with Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, he also shared his thoughts on the new HBO series, confessing that he and his family are not planning to watch it.
He said: "No one in my family has watched it. To me, it's a very simple matter. I was in the Marines and it was a war for a year. I came back I did not want to see war movies... I was in prison for eight years, when I got out, I didn't want to see a prison movie. I've lived it. I've seen it."
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