HBO’s ‘Staircase’: Sophie Brunet and her relationship with Michael Peterson
In the new HBO Max dramatic series “The Staircase,” a French documentary film crew arrives in Durham to chronicle the murder trial of Michael Peterson, accused of killing his wife, Kathleen, on a staircase in their home in December 2001.
The film crew, embedded with Peterson and his legal team, ships digital tapes back to France, where the footage is edited into an 8-part documentary series also called “The Staircase.” (It would eventually grow to 13 parts).
The editor of “The Staircase” documentary, Sophie Brunet, is officially introduced to the HBO audience in Episode 4: Common Sense.
Brunet, portrayed in the series by Juliette Binoche, plays a very important role in Peterson’s life. In Episode 5 of HBO’s companion podcast to “The Staircase,” Binoche said in an interview that she became close with Brunet while filming the HBO series, and that Brunet shared with her a great deal about her relationship with Peterson.
Here’s more about Brunet and her relationship with Michael Peterson.
Brunet and ‘The Staircase’ documentary
The News & Observer first reported on Brunet in June 2018, when Netflix released all 13 episodes of “The Staircase” documentary.
Brunet appears to have had about a romantic relationship with Peterson, beginning through email correspondence sometime after his 2003 conviction, continuing after his release in 2011, and ending in 2017, about three months after his Alford plea in the case.
The documentary director, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, confirmed to a French news organization in May 2018 that Brunet fell in love with Peterson while working on the “Staircase” project.
“This is one of the incredible things that happened during those 15 years. Life is really full of surprises. They had a real story, which lasted until May 2017. But she never let her own feelings affect the course of editing,” de Lestrade told L’Express.
Brunet can be seen in a video posted to YouTube in February 2018 discussing “The Staircase.”
She can also be seen in Episode 10 of “The Staircase” documentary, which was filmed in 2011, when Peterson was released from prison after being granted a new trial. She is visible once in a courtroom scene, sitting with Peterson’s family, and briefly at a celebration the night he was released from prison.
What Michael Peterson says about his relationship with Brunet
Peterson told The News & Observer in 2019 that in his first letter from Brunet, she told him that she knew he was innocent because she knew him better than anybody except his family, because she had watched hundreds of hours of him on film.
“I know you’re innocent, it was a great injustice,” Peterson recalls from Brunet’s letters.
Peterson said Brunet began sending him books in prison and the two made plans to live in Paris once he was free.
And he did go to Paris after his release, he says, but realized he couldn’t live there.
“I don’t speak French, I’m too old, I couldn’t afford to live in Paris, and my children and grandchildren live in America,” Peterson says in the video.
Peterson said he spent three days with Brunet in Paris and Normandy, and Brunet told him if he could not “commit to love with me all the time, let’s end it.”
Peterson: “It was a great blow to both of us, for which I feel not guilt, but sorrow. I could not give her what she really needed and deserved, and that would be a full-time partner living with her in Paris. And she said to me, ‘So you’re going to be content just being an old grandfather?’ But I didn’t say to her, ‘You know, yeah, that works fine for me.’”
Sophie Brunet in Peterson’s ‘Behind the Staircase’ book
Peterson also chronicles his relationship with Brunet in his memoir “Behind the Staircase,” self-published in 2019.
▪ According to his book, Brunet began her correspondence with him in 2004, about a month after his conviction. Peterson writes that Brunet told him she was convinced that he was a victim of injustice.
▪ He recounts their growing affection for each other, and her visits from Paris to North Carolina, where she visited him “three and four times a year” for a number of years at Nash Correctional Facility in Rocky Mount.
▪ It appears from the book that Brunet even lived in Durham for a time, working with Peterson neighbor Larry Pollard, on his Owl Theory.
▪ One passage from Peterson’s book describes her commitment: “Sophie dedicated herself to freeing me. No one — family friends or lawyers — worked harder in my defense. She declined job offers, divorced her husband and moved out of their house. She got a US phone number for me to call which cost her thousands in addition to what she spent visiting me three and four times a year. One summer she lived in Durham to work on my appeal.”
▪ Peterson also described one letter from Sophie, though it’s unclear if it’s taken verbatim or paraphrased: “I really wanted to do something for you. Maybe I felt that as an editor I had been taking care of you, trying to tell your story in a compelling way, trying to build your character so that the viewer would find it as fascinating as I did, trying to make your love for Kathleen noticeable, and hoping that my work would contribute in finding you innocent.”
More about Sophie Brunet
Brunet continues to work as a film editor, including two recent projects with “Staircase” director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade: The HBO original drama “Laetitia” and the miniseries “The Inside Game.”
She is also an editor on the acclaimed French film “Blue is the Warmest Colour” and on the true-crime documentary “Dark Secrets of a Trillion Dollar Island: Garenne.”
More on HBO’s ‘The Staircase’
For full coverage of HBO Max’s “The Staircase” and other background on the death of Kathleen Peterson and the murder trial of Michael Peterson, visit: newsobserver.com/topics/staircase
This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 9:00 AM.
