“We cast a net far and wide to find the right person there were so many things to get right about him, he’s a chameleon so he’s different things to different people,” Testar says. It was important for The Serpent to portray Sobhraj as a multifaceted character. Tahar Rahim and Jenna Coleman in The Serpent. It meant that we weren’t just telling the story of someone who committed crimes but instead we were telling the story of someone who did something heroic.” Casting was paramount. “Instead, we discovered this heroic story on the other side of it and realized that having someone for the audience to root for, someone who’s doing something good with dogged determination, felt like the way in. “It’s easy in an adaptation of a true crime story to make a catalogue of bad deeds and it becomes hard then to feel like you’re not glamorizing the actions of someone like Sobhraj,” he says. “Working with him felt absolutely crucial, and he kindly introduced us to a lot of the other people who were involved so we were able to build a network.”Ĭollaborating with Knippenberg, Testar says, was crucial to telling the story in a way that felt important. “We started by realizing that Herman’s story had been told very little in fact, in one of the major book’s about Sobhraj’s life, Herman’s story only appears toward the very end,” Testar says. Instead of framing the series about the crimes of Sobhraj and his cohorts (including his girlfriend, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, played by Coleman), the producers decided to focus on the story of the Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg, who tracked and helped capture Sobhraj and is played in the series by Billy Howle. “Even if we know only a small bit about each character, we used that wherever we could…” It was constantly balancing ethical decisions, “In the case of people who’d been killed, how much did it feel right to show the terrible nature of the crimes?” The hero’s journey prevailed.īilly Howle as the real-life Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg in The Serpent. “We did a huge amount of research into each character and we lean on that as much as possible,” Testar says. The team developing the series reached out to the real people involved in the events, or their nearest living relatives, in an attempt to make sure they all had the opportunity to give input and to ensure that the series focused not just on Sobhraj but also the people who were conned or killed by him. “We needed that to figure out the right way to tell the story as much as anything, we thought it was imperative to try to make contact with everyone involved in the story to invite them to take part in the research process or even just to tell them it was happening.” “It’s such a challenge telling a true story and there was a very long development period for the show,” explains Paul Testar, a co-producer on the series. But nothing has told the story quite like The Serpent, an eight-part limited series starring Tahar Rahim and Jenna Coleman that premiered to acclaim on the BBC earlier this year and is making its American debut April 2 on Netflix.Ĭharles Sobhraj, whose gruesome 1970s killing spree is dramatized in The Serpent, airing now on Netflix. It’s no wonder that the sordid story of Sobhraj and his victims has been catnip for adaptations, inspiring books and films. A brazen trip to Nepal in 2003, however, put him back in the crosshairs of authorities and he was arrested once again, charged with a double murder and sentenced to life in prison-a term he’s still serving today. After being released from prison in 1997, Sobhraj returned to his native France and seemed to revel in his villainy he gave interviews and reportedly sold the rights to his life story for millions of dollars. Sobhraj, a Frenchman who presented himself as a gem dealer based in Bangkok, had been accused of committing dozens of murders (in addition to forgeries and theft) along what was known as “the hippie trail”-a sort of midcentury pilgrimage from Europe to South Asia-and earned himself the nickname The Bikini Killer in the process. Charles Sobhraj became internationally infamous in 1976 when he was convicted of murder and sentenced to jail in India.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |