Steven Avery still hasn't been allowed to watch Making a Murderer
Filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos reveal that both Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey have not seen the Netflix true crime series that made their cases infamous
Netflix's Making a Murderer transformed the cases of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, putting their small Wisconsin town trial at the centre of a global debate.
However, almost three years after it was first released, neither man has been able to watch the show that made their cases notorious.
Filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos told RadioTimes.com that Steven and Brendan have not been allowed to watch Making a Murderer.
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"Neither has seen the series," Demos said. Both men remain in prison after being convicted for the murder of Teresa Halbach, a crime they maintain they did not commit.
However, Demos added that Avery has been able to gather some information about what is featured in the series with help from a viewer.
"Somebody in the UK actually transcribed Part One and sent it to Steven," Demos said. "So he has 'read' the series. But neither has seen the series."
Season two of the Netflix series picks up soon after the release of the original Making a Murderer.
Demos said that the pair very quickly realised that "the story wasn't over" following the debut of a series ten years in the making, and returned to Wisconsin to resume filming in July 2016.
"At the centre of the story you have a fighter, Steven Avery," she said. "Right at the end of episode 10 of Part One, he says he’s going to keep on fighting. We knew it wasn’t over.
"So the questions for us were, ‘What is going to be happening, and who’s going to be making it happen? Will there be something to actually film? And will we be able to gain or maintain access to that?’
"Those were the questions we were dealing with post-launch in the spring of 2016."
The pair were able to secure an agreement with Avery's new lawyer Kathleen Zellner to follow her progress in preparing his case for the postconviction stage. Dassey's legal team Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin also agreed to be filmed.
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Asked whether the pair believed Avery and Dassey were guilty or not guilty following the filming of season two, Demos and Ricciardi said that the new episodes will put viewers in a better position to decide for themselves.
"Our focus really was on the process that led to the convictions of these two men. Our inquiry really never was about whether or not they actually committed the crime," Ricciardi said.
"That was our focus. We certainly have our own personal opinion, but we also feel that we’ve earned it because we lived with the story for ten years and know quite a lot about these particular cases. But we try not to talk about that too much because our main intention really is to give our viewers an experience: to leave space for the viewers to have their own feelings about it, their own opinions about it."
Demos added, "In Part Two you’ll actually learn a lot more about what happened in Part One. I think you’ll be in a much better position to judge for yourself whether the process was fair or not in Part Two."
Making a Murderer Part Two is released on Netflix on Friday 19th October 2018
