‘Under the Bridge’: Lily Gladstone & Riley Keough on Infiltrating Hulu’s True-Crime Drama (VIDEO)
Under the Bridge unravels the true story of teen Reena Virk’s (Vritika Gupta) murder in late-’90s British Columbia, plucking the narrative from Rebecca Godfrey’s novel of the same name, but when it comes to Hulu‘s adaptation, the inclusion of Rebecca (Riley Keough) as a character as well as cop Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone) are new elements for the story itself.
Despite Godfrey not being a featured character in the book, Keough had a wealth of information to pull from. “For my character anyway, there was so much about Rebecca. I was lucky that I had a lot of resources,” she points out. “I had poems she wrote and videos and photos and all these things to sort of get a sense of who she was.”
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Godfrey died roughly a week after Hulu picked up Under the Bridge to series but had worked for two years adapting the book for television alongside Quinn Shephard. Godfrey was credited as an executive producer, but Keough never had the chance to meet her. “When you’re playing a real person, you do feel a little sense of responsibility to do them justice,” Keough continues, “especially with these circumstances.”
Gladstone, fresh off her awards campaign for Killers of the Flower Moon, takes on the role of Cam, an investigator who has a history with Godfrey. In actuality, Cam didn’t exist, and is a creation for the show, but one that Gladstone was excited to tackle. “Playing a fictionalized character in a real story like this, you are there to have an allegorical conversation,” she says.
“And I think the device of Cam and Rebecca having this history, having this relationship is a way to bring two entities that were very much at play during the Reena Virk case,” Gladstone continues. “This perspective of law enforcement and the system of law enforcement, and then this body of the journalistic, the novelist, the storytelling approach to something that’s real and happening to real people.”
As Gladstone points out, “A lot of times, law enforcement points at journalism as if it’s a thorn in its side and then vice versa. So getting to play that out in a character dynamic and a relationship was a way of having those conversations.”
See how their onscreen relationship unfolds as Under the Bridge continues on Hulu, and catch the full video interview with Gladstone and Keough, above.
Under the Bridge, New Episodes, Wednesdays, Hulu
