Under the Bridge Showrunners On Adapting Reena Virk’s Story & Casting Riley Keough As Rebecca Godfrey

Hulu’s true crime miniseries Under the Bridge explores the life and death of Reena Virk, a case that shook British Columbia to its core in 1997. The show dramatizes the murder and the case that follows, but it is based on Rebecca Godfrey’s book of the same name that chronicled the true events. In order to shed light on Reena herself, however, showrunners Quinn Shephard and Samir Mehta also incorporated details from Manjit Virk’s book, Reena: A Father’s Story.

Under the Bridge also introduces new characters to explore the wide-ranging implications of Reena’s case, most notably Officer Cam Bentland (played by Lily Gladstone). Though fictional, her position as an Indigenous woman working on the face allows the series to address racial injustice and the failings of the justice system. Her relationship with writer Rebecca Godfrey (Riley Keough), who serves as the audience’s way into the story, also ties the various threads of the investigation together.

Screen Rant interviewed Shephard and Mehta about the approach they used to adapt Under The Bridge, and why Reena’s father was an important part of telling her story. The showrunners also discussed young Gupta’s stellar performance and what Gladstone and Keough’s characters added to the series.

Under The Bridge Showrunners Pulled From More Than Rebecca Godfrey’s Book To Tell Reena’s Story

Screen Rant: Quinn, can you talk about your approach to adapting Rebecca’s book? I especially love the smooth transitions between flashbacks and the present-day investigation.

Quinn Shephard: Yeah, I was enamored by Rebecca’s book right away. I think that the storytelling is quite lyrical, and it’s not attached to time, if that makes sense. The book is very poetic, and it moves back and forth. It moves into flashbacks, then moves into the future.

It allows you to feel all of the time and the faded nature of so many things that happened around this crime, and I think that translated really naturally for us when we were talking about how to really bring Reena in as the heart of the show and make sure that her life was more important than her death. We took the approach of, “Well, time doesn’t matter,” into having multiple timelines on the show.

Samir, can you talk about what you pulled from outside of just the book? Did you look at Manjit’s book as well or get to speak to real people involved? What methods did you use to really honor Reena?

Samir Mehta: Yeah, we optioned Manjit’s book. I spoke to Manjit myself just to get personal stories he was willing to give. Beyond that, a big part of it was just excavating personal experience, being a first-generation American myself from an Indian family.

Then a lot of it was also Quinn, myself, and our writers speaking about our childhood stories and what it was like being in middle school. [We were] trying to find those little details that we felt would be something everybody’s experienced at some point

How Lily Gladstone & Riley Keough’s Roles Widen The Scope Of Under The Bridge

Lily and Riley are both incredible in this. What was it like for you both getting to flesh out Rebecca’s perspective as a character in the story and her dynamic with Cam?

Quinn Shephard: I think that we were both really interested in exploring the psychology of true crime; what it puts somebody through when they decide to take on a story like this and enter that darkness, as well as the responsibility of becoming the voice that gets to represent this story. I think that having them both in the show allowed us to touch on true crime, and it allowed us to actually criticize the justice system through the personal lenses of these two characters.

Vritika Gupta is so lovely as Reena. Can you talk about casting her and how her performance really helps to ensure Rena herself is not forgotten?

Samir Mehta: Credit due to our casting director, Julie Schubert, who went to high school theaters across America, looked at 700 girls to find Vritika, who’s incredible. And it was a fascinating process. Vritika herself is such a bubbly, sweet, popular girl, so it actually was quite a transformation for her to go into that place. But she did it so wonderfully and really showed up with a level of maturity that sometimes you don’t even see from adult actors.

About Under The Bridge

Under the Bridge is based on acclaimed author Rebecca Godfrey’s book about the 1997 true story of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) who went to join friends at a party and never returned home. Through the eyes of Godfrey (Riley Keough) and a local police officer (Lily Gladstone), the series takes us into the hidden world of the young girls accused of the murder — revealing startling truths about the unlikely killer.

Check out our other Under The Bridge interviews with:

• Lily Gladstone & Riley Keough
• Vritika Gupta & Aiyana Goodfellow
• Chloe Guidry & Javon “Wanna” Walton

Source: Screen Rant Plus