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This article addresses the real life events behind American Nightmare and Unbelievable.

A young woman is assaulted by a brazen home invader. The police don’t believe the crime occurred and accuse the woman of lying for attention. Later on, the home invader strikes again, confirming that the story was true all along.

The above summary describes the real life experience of Denise Huskins as recounted in Netflix’s latest docuseries, American Nightmare. In 2015, Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were attacked and drugged in their home by an intruder. Denise would then be kidnapped by the masked man, raped by him twice, and released back home to a world where police just couldn’t buy her version of events, true as they were.

It just so happens that the above summary also describes 2019 Netflix miniseries Unbelievable. And that’s why it needs to be added to your queue the...

Nominated for Best Limited Series/TV Movie Supporting Actress for Netflix’s “Unbelievable” at the Emmys, Toni Collette led our odds during Phase 1, but she is now in second place for the win after her co-stars Kaitlyn Dever and Merritt Wever were egregiously left out of the lead actress lineup. “Watchmen’s” Jean Smart is out in front after the HBO series racked up 26 nominations, while three “Mrs. America” gals — Uzo Aduba, Margo Martindale and Tracey Ullman — and “Hollywood’s” Holland Taylor trail Collette in that order. The actress previously earned three Emmy citations, her first for “Tsunami: The Aftermath” in this very category in 2007 and her other two for “United States of Tara” in Best Comedy Actress in 2009 — which she won — and ’10. Here’s why I believe she can collect her second Emmy for “Unbelievable.”

For her turn as Grace Rasmussen — a Colorado detective who teams up with fellow...

After winning her inaugural Emmy on her first try in 2015 for directing the HBO miniseries “Olive Kitteridge,” Lisa Cholodenko looks to return to the Best Limited Series/TV Movie Directing lineup for Netflix’s “Unbelievable.” She helmed the first three episodes, of which she chose the opener to enter at the Emmys.

The premiere centers on Kaitlyn Dever’s Marie Adler, an 18-year-old who reports being raped at knifepoint to the local police station in Lynnwood, Washington. The story is told through Marie’s eyes, through which the world becomes cold and bleak as she grapples with trauma, all while being confronted with inklings of doubt from the people around her. With her grounded direction and tight collaboration with cinematographer Quyen Tran (who uses a veristic color palette throughout), Cholodenko crafts an uber-realistic atmosphere, which not only sets the tone for the show, but is a pivotal step toward immersing viewers into Marie’s situation.

Authenticity was key for both women in making Netflix’s real-life rape-investigation drama.

Showrunner Susannah Grant knew it would be hard for viewers to engage with the real-life subject matter of Unbelievable – a rape investigation that is woefully mishandled by the police – but was also aware audiences would lose interest if the show bore the hallmarks of Holly­wood storytelling.

“Sexual assault is something people spend tons of energy running away from, and I couldn’t give people one reason to turn away,” says Grant of the Netflix show, which is both a gripping procedural and an indictment of a...

Madeleine L’Engle once wrote: “Truth is what is true, and it’s not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing.” It’s a quote I return to often while thinking about Netflix’s stellar limited series “Unbelievable” for a variety of reasons, but never so much as when mulling over how the series managed to take inspiration from real events to create something even greater than the sum of its parts. It takes something factual and makes it true.

For Susannah Grant, who served as co-creator, writer, and director on “Unbelievable,” the process of adapting “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” originally published by ProPublica and The Marshall Project, was all about being more faithful to the truth than the facts. “You’re going for the authenticity of someone’s experience,” Grant said in a phone interview with IndieWire, “And you obviously can’t incorporate every life moment that added up to that,...

The Best Limited Series/TV Movie Actress Emmy race has seen changes recently, with Nat Geo’s “Genius: Aretha” forced to shut down production due to the coronavirus pandemic and HBO’s “The Undoing” moving to the fall, taking their respective leading ladies Cynthia Erivo and Nicole Kidman out of contention. Nevertheless, the field remains stacked with Academy Award winners and/or nominees, as well as Emmy darlings. So I ask of you, Emmy voters, to keep breakthrough performer Kaitlyn Dever’s searing work in Netflix’s true-crime miniseries “Unbelievable” top of mind come voting.

The eight-part series opens with an episode that sees Dever in nearly every frame as 18-year-old Marie Adler, who in 2008 reports being raped at knifepoint to her local police in Lynnwood, Washington. Marie is asked to recount her rape multiple times, which Dever convincingly plays as though salt is being repeatedly poured on an open wound.

This year’s Best Limited Series/TV Movie Actress Emmy race is beyond stacked. We’ve already seen turns from Academy Award winners Regina King (“Watchmen”) and Helen Mirren (“Catherine the Great”), while the next two months will have an influx of performances from Oscar champs Cate Blanchett (“Mrs. America”), Nicole Kidman (“The Undoing”), Octavia Spencer (“Self Made”) and Reese Witherspoon (“Little Fires Everywhere”), plus past Emmy nominees Zoe Kazan (“The Plot Against America”) and Kerry Washington (“Little Fires Everywhere”).. Amid the insanely crowded field, I urge you, dear Emmy voter, not to forget about Merritt Wever, who stunned with her work in Netflix’s “Unbelievable,” which released way back in September.

In the eight-part miniseries, Wever plays Colorado detective Karen Duvall, who teams up with fellow detective Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) after discovering unnerving similarities between several rape cases in their state. What they’re initially unaware of is...

Toni Collette and Netflix are back at it again. The Unbelievable star is teaming up with the streaming service for a new drama series titled Pieces of Her. Based on the Karin Slaughter novel of the same name, the story follows Andy Oliver and her mother, Laura (Collette), after a random act of violence sets off an unexpected chain of events in their sleepy Georgia town. When figures from her mother's past start to resurface, 30-year-old Andy is forced to go on the run and embarks on a dangerous journey across America, drawing her toward the dark, hidden heart of her family.

Written by Homeland's Charlotte Stoudt, the show currently has an eight-episode order and an all-woman creative team joining Stoudt as executive producers, including Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland), Minkie Spiro (The Plot Against America), and Bruna Papandrea (Big Little Lies). Spiro has also been tapped to direct all eight episodes,...

When actress Merritt Wever took home a supporting Emmy in 2013 for her role as bunny-scrubs aficionado and ER nurse Zoey Barkow on Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie,” she nearly rivaled the brevity of Joe Pesci‘s Oscar speech ( “It’s my privilege. Thank you.”) when he won his trophy for 1990’s “Goodfellas.” Her reaction: “Thank you so much! Um, I gotta go. Bye.”

The thing is, that is such a human response to getting your first prize for doing something you truly love. Droll, a tad loopy, relatable and utterly without pretense, Wever would outgrow her part as Edie Falco‘s sidekick on the medical show and go on to claim a more surprising supporting Emmy win as a determined and hard-bitten widow of a deceased mayor and sister of the town’s sheriff in Netflix’s 2017 female-driven Western “Godless.”

She has done films over the years, including 2014’s “Birdman” as...

Last week, we at TVLine revealed our 20 finalists for Performer of the Year. We have since debated fiercely among ourselves to come up with a winning trio whose collective work was unbelievably affecting — Kaitlyn Dever, Merritt Wever and Toni Collette, of Netflix’s Unbelievable.

I was raped. With those three words — the first uttered by Dever’s Marie Adler — the miniseries was set in motion, almost daring you to stay tuned as it told the story of a teenage rape victim whose case was heartlessly mishandled by detectives in Lynnwood, Wash. Marie had just been violated in a multitude of ways,...

The Golden Globes nominees aren’t the only stars of awards season. Variety turned to astrology to assign Zodiac signs to this year’s nominees. Some selections required a little more nuance — Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” is a Virgo with a prominent Sagittarius rising and Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” is a Sagittarius that wishes it were a Virgo. This thorough examination does not serve as an official predictions list, but Leos are known to gravitate toward the spotlight.

Aries: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”

It would be way too easy to assign the mercurial sign of Aries to this year’s intense wartime entries, but instead, for your consideration: There is absolutely nothing more Aries on this list of nominations than “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” This show is all big personalities in suspiciously sharp outfits fighting to get a word in edgewise while (in Midge’s case) literally stealing the spotlight.

After five years of wild misadventures and invaluable life lessons emerging through generous clouds of pot smoke, the final season of Comedy Central’s “Broad City” pulled one of its riskiest moves to date: it let its brassy heroines grow up. After spending most of their 20s attached at the hip, Abbi (co-creator Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana (co-creator Ilana Glazer) found their own paths, independent of each other, and a new gear in which their relationship could thrive even across state lines. From its opening minutes to its poignant closing moments, “Broad City” told the story of a fiercely devoted friendship with expert clarity, empathy, and of course, some of the most ridiculous New York City detours television has ever seen.

What “Broad City” accomplished with its five-season run isn’t limited to just the show. The TV landscape it entered in 2014 looked nothing like the one it left behind...

Despite three Emmy nominations for “Nurse Jackie” and “Godless”, two of which translated into wins (“Nurse Jackie” in 2013 and “Godless”), Merritt Wever has never been nominated for a Golden Globe or an individual Screen Actors Guild Award. But she might finally get her due, thanks to her starring role in Netflix’s eight-part limited series “Unbelievable.”

The series is based on T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong’s 2015 news article “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” which was published by ProPublica and The Marshall Project. Set in Washington state in 2008, it follows 18-year-old Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever) after she reports being raped at knifepoint to the police. When two male officers confront her about inconsistencies in her story, she gives in to the pressure and says she made it all up, causing her to be charged with false reporting. Three years later, two Colorado detectives, Karen Duvall (Wever) and Grace Rasmussen...

Kaitlyn Dever and Merritt Wever co-star in Netflix’s “Unbelievable” as a rape victim and a determined detective, respectively. They’re both being campaigned as leads in the limited series, which means they’ll go head to head at the Golden Globes for Best TV Movie/Limited Actress. Might they cancel each other out, or could they both be nominated? If they both make the cut they’d be only the fourth pair of co-stars to be nominated in that race in the 21st century.

But there is precedent, and quite recently for that matter. Both Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore were nominated in 2010 for their performances as the Beale sisters in HBO’s telefilm “Grey Gardens.” Then two pairs of co-stars contended in 2018: Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon for “Big Little Lies” and Lange and Susan Sarandon for “Feud: Bette and Joan.” You’d think vote-splitting might then prevent any of them from winning,...

Watching Merritt Wever and Toni Collette on Netflix’s limited series “Unbelievable,” it got me thinking about another series that featured two dedicated women cops, “Cagney and Lacey.” Back in the early ’80s, TV producer Barney Rosenzweig was influenced by his feminist girlfriend and future wife Barbara Corday to make the first female-driven buddy film with a script by Corday and Barbara Avedon. It wasn’t picked up by movie studios so they took it to TV networks. Only CBS jumped on it.

In the original TV movie that aired in 1981, Loretta Swit played New York City police detective Christine Cagney but couldn’t do the series because of her commitment to “M*A*S*H.” The role was then taken over by Meg Foster on the show’s first season in 1982. But there was concern that she was too tough in the role — causing some viewers to view the...

NetflixThe series is exactly what the world needs to see at a time when more women are opening up about sexual violence, only to be met with hostility and skepticism. Sowmya Rajendran*Spoilers ahead Unbelievable, an investigative thriller now streaming on Netflix, begins with an 18-year-old woman, Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever), filing a rape complaint. She was asleep in her apartment, she says, when a man wearing a mask bound her and raped her. The police take down her statement and send her for a medical examination. But soon, the lead investigator, detective Parker, becomes doubtful that the rape even took place. Based on a true story, Unbelievable is gripping from the word go. The series, created by Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon, is also exactly what the world needs to see at a time when more and more women are opening up about the sexual violence that...

The Performers | Toni Collette and Merritt Wever

The Show | Netflix’s Unbelievable

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The Episode | Episode 6 (Sept. 13, 2019)

The Performances | The 2019 Emmys are just hours away, but after binging Netflix’s often grueling yet ultimately life-affirming eight-episode, fact-based drama our minds are focused on next year’s ceremony and this dream scenario: the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series contest...

Warning: The following story contains descriptions of sexual assault, as well as spoilers for the TV show Unbelievable.

Netflix's Unbelievable cuts between two rape investigations in which detectives employ jarringly different approaches. The first and second episodes contrast like night and day. In the second episode, Detective Karen Duvall conducts a thorough investigation in Golden, Co, one that highlights the worst mistakes Detective Parker makes in the first one with survivor Marie in Lynnwood, Wa. The perpetrator, as it would turn out, is the same serial rapist in both cases.

Unbelievable is based on a troubling true story, and it's not the first piece to shed light on this miscarriage of justice. The Netflix project dramatizes the real events covered in an episode of This American Life and a Pulitzer-winning article from ProPublica and The Marshall Project. Both are excellent pieces of reporting that helped the series emphasize shocking oversights in Marie's case.

Netflix is well-known for its expansive slate of original series, but its roster of true-crime series are starting to emerge as the highest quality series on the streamer. 

The latest effort is Unbelievable, an eight-part limited series that follows a young girl named Marie (Booksmart's Kaitlyn Dever) who is charged with lying about being raped, and the plight of two female detectives tasked with finding out the truth. 

From the get-go, it's apparent that the series wants to shine a light on sexual assault, and it does so in an explicit way that will probably make it difficult for some viewers to get through. 

That opening installment is not for the faint of heart.

Related: The Umbrella Academy Adds The Originals' Yusuf Gatewood, Two More

That episode pivots from present to past, showing Marie in the present, as well as flashes of her version of events. 

The issue that plagues...

Two years before the #MeToo movement rocked Hollywood, many people’s reactions to then-18-year-old Marie Adler’s report of rape were disbelief. The young woman at the center of ProPublica’s “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” had experienced so much trauma in her young life, she became an unreliable witness in her own attack and was actually charged with a crime of her own before the truth came out. Now, two years after #MeToo, her story has been adapted into an eight-part limited series for Netflix entitled “Unbelievable,” starring Kaitlyn Dever as Marie.

“We started working on this two years ago, and it was obviously relevant and had been, unfortunately, for centuries, but then suddenly the material, and this story in particular, felt like it completely coincided with this wave of consciousness about this subject,” executive producer Sarah Timberman tells Variety.

Oscar nominee (for “Erin Brockovich”) Susannah Grant wrote,...

Based on a true story, Unbelievable is an unflinching look at injustice in America and how we're failing survivors of sexual assault.

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The following contains light spoilers for Unbelievable, which is available to stream on Netflix now.

We’ve all heard the argument, and some of us have even made it: we can’t just believe women. Certainly not all of them. What about all those poor guys who are falsely accused? Most of us know someone who knows someone who knows someone who was accused of something he definitely didn’t do, right? And up until a couple of years ago, if we knew someone who had been raped or sexually assaulted, most of us didn’t even know it.

Netflix’s Unbelievable, a dramatized version of an all-too-real story, presents the stomach-churning truth behind someone who was counted among those women who lied about being raped.

Alec Bojalad Sep 13, 2019

Netflix's stunning survivor-centric crime drama Unbelievable is a brave step forward for the true crime genre.

The following contains spoilers for Unbelievable.

Netflix’s crime drama Unbelievable is a truly unbelievable piece of work. From moment one, it puts the focus of true crime back where it should have always been in the first place: on the victimized.

Based on a true story first chronicled by ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, Unbelievable follows teenager Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever) who is accused of and eventually charged with lying about having been raped. While Marie suffers from the consequences of a world not ready to believe her, two detectives, Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) and Karen Duvall (Merritt Weaver) work to track down a serial rapist who, unbeknownst to them, may exonerate a young girl they’ve never met.

Unbelievable is a deeply empathetic and intelligent television experience for many reasons.

Late in the new Netflix miniseries Unbelievable, an attorney laments one of the many unfortunate ways that rape is treated differently by law enforcement than other significant crimes. “Nobody ever accuses a robbery victim of lying,” he notes. “But when it comes to sexual assault?”

Marie (Booksmart‘s Kaitlyn Dever) is accused of lying — repeatedly. The story opens with police arriving at the apartment building for at-risk youth that she moved into after leaving the foster care system. “I was raped,” Marie says plainly. As she relates the tale to...

Kaitlyn Dever proved herself to have plenty of comedic chops earlier this year in Booksmart, but in Netflix's upcoming drama Unbelievable, she gets the chance to show off her dramatic range. The series is based on the true events reported in The Marshall Project and ProPublica's Pulitzer Prize-winning article "An Unbelievable Story of Rape," written by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, as well as an episode of This American Life ("Anatomy of Doubt").

Dever stars as teenager Marie Adler, who files a police report claiming she was sexually assaulted by a man who broke into her home. Unfortunately, she soon discovers that the investigating detectives and her own close friends and family doubt her story. Luckily, Marie ends up having two important women in her corner - detectives Grace Rasmussen and Karen Duvall (Emmy winners Toni Collette and Merritt Wever), who team up to investigate a pair of...

Netflix found a hit this summer with “When They See Us,” adapting a true story of a past injustice into a miniseries that addresses contemporary societal demons. Now the streaming giant is hoping to repeat that success, and perhaps some of the progress that accompanied it, with “Unbelievable.” The new limited series about rape culture in America, based on reporting from ProPublica and NPR, is set to debut on the platform this fall.

Netflix’s official synopsis reads: “When teenager Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever) files a police report claiming she’s been sexually assaulted by an intruder in her home, the investigating detectives, as well as the people closest to her, come to doubt the truth of her story. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, detectives Grace Rasmussen and Karen Duvall (Emmy winners Toni Collette and Merritt Wever) meet while investigating an eerily similar pair of intruder rapes and partner to catch a potential serial rapist.

Netflix on Thursday dropped the first trailer for the limited series Unbelievable, which finds Booksmart‘s Kaitlyn Dever at the center of an alleged sexual assault.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning article “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, and the This American Life episode “Anatomy of Doubt,” Unbelievable tells the true story of Marie (Dever), a teenager who files a police report claiming that she was raped by a home intruder. As an investigation gets underway, the lead detectives on the case, as well as those closest to Marie, begin to doubt her story.

Netflix has revealed the trailer and premiere date for “Unbelievable,” and despite its talented cast — including Kaitlyn Dever, Toni Collette and Merritt Wever — this show will be a tough one to watch.

The series in inspired by the real events in The Marshall Project and ProPublica Pulitzer Prize-winning article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” and the “This American Life” radio episode, “Anatomy of Doubt.”

When teenager Marie Adler files a police report saying she’s been sexually assaulted by an intruder in her home, the investigating detectives, as well as the people closest to her, come to doubt the truth of her story. The male cops come off especially bad here.

Also Read: Netflix: Staying Ad-Free 'Remains a Deep Part of Our Brand'

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, detectives Grace Rasmussen (Collette) and Karen Duvall (Wever) meet while investigating an eerily similar pair of intruder rapes and partner to catch a potential serial rapist,...