Spoiler alert – this story contains plot developments from Hulu’s “Under the Bridge.”
Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
Teen girls with dangerous fantasies of the glam side of crime cross the line in a beguiling murder mystery series. Premiered Thursday, April 17, on Hulu and running for eight episodes, “Under the Bridge” is a fictionalized adaptation of the true-crime book by Rebecca Godfrey.
Following a disturbing true story of a teen girl murdered by her classmates, the show features Indigenous characters in a cold, rainy Canadian town.
Set in 1997, Rebecca Godfrey – played by Riley Keough, who has Cherokee roots from her grandfather Elvis Presley whose great-great-great-grandmother Morning White Dove was full Cherokee – is home in Victoria, British Columbia, researching a book when she crosses paths with a group of teenage bad girls who obsess over crime. It seems like teen fantasy until 14-year-old Reena Virk, played by Vritika Gupta, whose family are immigrants from India, disappears after a party and later is found dead after a fight under a bridge.
The police investigation is led by ambitious officer Cam Bentland, Lily Gladstone, Siksikaitsitapii and Nimíipuu, who has past conflicts with her own family.
Keough had been in touch with Gladstone for years about various projects, including asking her for advice on Indigenous crew for her film “War Pony” about young boys growing up on a reservation.
She and Gladstone “just DM’d about random things or responded to each other’s stories. We didn’t say ‘Let’s work together,’” Keough said to Hollywood Reporter. “I was such a fan of hers and when you’re a fan of other actors you’re kind of always thinking of them when you’re doing jobs. She was the first person who came to mind for this. Reena’s story is incredibly important in wanting to honor her and her life. Secondly, there were just themes in this series that I haven’t really seen explored in this genre, like empathy, sort of radical forgiveness, and that was interesting to me.”
As for Gladstone, “I was really intrigued by the opportunity to build and travel that arc,” she said in an interview with Deadline, “because I feel like with a piece like my last project (the factual crime story in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’) true crime is such a fascinating genre and it has been for a long time. There’s something that we’re compelled by with these stories. I feel like a lot of times the human element of it, particularly the people who suffered the most, are the ones that get erased. The thing that happened to them becomes a sensationalized thing for the media. And then it becomes something for consumption.”
Gladstone says she was intrigued by her law enforcement character Cam and the racism the victim’s family felt coming from the police as well as the media, the way the police didn’t take it seriously at first, how the trial overwhelmed them all with the fascination people had with it, and how Reena got lost in that process.
As for the bigger picture of the murder, Gladstone says, “So much in this story and in the aftermath of it we can’t even begin to touch on in eight episodes but has a really big cultural impact touching into themes of this elusive but very necessary concept and conversation around restorative justice and being in a landscape where that conversation happens and is led by Indigenous people.”
Gladstone says that “working with Riley is fun, she’s committed, nobody’s more committed than her. To just put it all up there and to have these moments. It’s easy to build chemistry quickly with somebody who’s generous with their character, with their time and in a scene together. There was no sense of anything else in our scenes together except for each other and we had conversations about what the relationship was. We both knew in a meta sense what our character’s represented when we’re talking about the allegories found in this show.”
There’s a twist at the end that involves an adoption story. Cam, born into an Indigenous family, became a cop because of her adopted family. She relates to the victim and the racism she faced. It points to the Sixties Scoop, a period in Canada when federal policies were passed to facilitate the adoption of Indigenous children by primarily white families. The legacy of that period divided Native families from each other and still affects their lives.
“The young actress who plays the young version of me in this show also plays my niece in ‘Fancy Dance,’” Gladstone says. “Isabel Deroy-Olson, Tr’ondek Hwech’in, is playing young Cam in this. In Isabel’s own family, her father went through this and had a very similar story to Cam. Without spoiling her arc exactly, you know from the first episode that she’s Indigenous being raised in a non-Indigenous cop family.”
On the rise
Gladstone has three more confirmed projects lined up.
She is set to work with Morissa Maltz, who directed the acclaimed indie drama “The Unknown Country” that featured Gladstone, who won a Gotham Award for her role. Their new film, “Jazzy,” will be a companion piece and follow-up story. In addition to starring, Gladstone will be executive producer.
“The Unknown Country” followed Gladstone’s character — the grieving Tana — on a soul-searching road trip across America, and introduced the scene-stealing character of Jazzy, played by Jasmine Bearkiller Shangreaux, a young Oglala Lakota girl growing up in South Dakota. The roles will be flipped in “Jazzy,” with Shangreaux taking center stage and Gladstone supporting her journey.
Gladstone and Bowen Yang of “Saturday Night Live” will star in Bleecker Street and Shivhans Pictures’ remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 romantic comedy “The Wedding Banquet” from director Andrew Ahn. Kelly Marie Tran, Oscar winner Yuh-jung Youn and Joan Chen are also set to star.
Filming in May in Vancouver, the story follows what happens when Min’s (not yet cast) boyfriend Chris (Yang) rejects his marriage proposal. Min convinces his best friend Angela (Tran) to marry him instead, paying for her partner Liz’s (Gladstone) in vitro fertilization treatments in exchange for his green card. Things get complicated when Min’s grandmother makes a surprise trip from Seoul to throw the couple a Korean wedding banquet.
Gladstone is also attached to star in “The Memory Police,” an adaption of the acclaimed 1994 science fiction novel of the same name by Yoko Ogawa. She’ll be reuniting with Martin Scorsese, who will executive produce the film along with Ogawa.
Ogawa’s novel takes place on an unnamed island where the island’s residents are subject to collective amnesia. They constantly forget things, including objects, people and daily rituals, and the amnesia is enforced by an organization called the Memory Police. In the story, a novelist tries to hide her editor, who can still remember, from the Memory Police, while he encourages her to write her book.
During a question-and-answer session following a screening of “Killers of the Flower Moon” in Los Angeles in February, Gladstone said “The Memory Place” is the “kind of story that could take place everywhere. I think anybody who comes from a world culture or a history where there’s been a systemic effort to erase your sense of who you are, your memories, your language, your culture. In this film, birds are disappeared because they’re deemed unnecessary.”
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