While Bill Pullman was filming “Murdaugh Murders: The Movie,” events in Alex Murdaugh’s life were unfolding.
Charged with killing his wife and son, Murdaugh was the subject of countless national news stories, captivating audiences with his behavior in the courtroom.
Pullman, meanwhile, was trying to make sense of the situations that led to the trial and the actions that resulted.
“I had never done that before,” the “Independence Day” star says. “It wasn’t a manipulation of writers…it was you layering your story on top of another series.”
A Netflix documentary – also called “Murdaugh Murders” – was released before Pullman’s film was completed. It tracked the family and how it allegedly used its wealth and power to sway law enforcement and cover up crimes that implicated family members. When Alex’s wife and son were murdered, the plot thickened. March 2, he was convicted of murder and sent to South Carolina prison for two life sentences.
“My first instinct was I didn’t want to do it if they were expecting me to be a mimic," the 69-year-old Pullman says. "I had done that in ‘Too Big to Fail,’ (as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase) but I didn’t want to get into that with this this. Curiosity just led me. There was a tension between needing to learn lines and keep moving with shooting” and digging into the developing story.
Charged with killing his wife and son, Alex Murdaugh (Bill Pullman) became a nightly news subject during the summer. A movie, "Murdaugh Murder…
Pullman says he was caught between "vertical" and "horizontal" goals: The film and the news were moving at different speeds. As much as he didn't want to peek into the day's events, “I did end up watching more than I thought.”
Murdaugh’s behavior in the courtroom gave the actor ample time to hear his voice and study his accent. “He just loved to say ‘dog,’” Pullman says. “’What you have to understand about these dogs.’ The great thing about Southern people is there are lots of different versions of the accent. He could talk very slow or very fast. He could start low and then go high. It was so performative.”
The father/son relationship, detailed in the first night of “Murdaugh Murders,” was combative and deceptive. That offered plenty of opportunity for speculation but it didn’t open the door for Pullman to draw on his own life.
Bill Pullman, right, plays a father who's upset with his son's actions in "Murdaugh Murders: The Movie."
Son Lewis (who’s a star of “Lessons in Chemistry”) wasn't interested in going into dad’s business.
“Julia Ormand says some actors come out of exhibitionism, some come out of extreme shyness and they both can be good actors. I didn’t think of our Lewis as overly exhibitionistic. In fact, he had a lot of performance anxiety early on that he worked through. But he worked through that and, by senior year, said he was going to be in a play.”
Now, Pullman says, “a wash of relief and wonderment comes over me when I watch him. He has astounding chemistry with Brie Larson (in ‘Lessons’) and it’s like watching some animals at the zoo. You’re just so curious about the behavior.”
Throughout his career, Pullman says, younger actors have asked for advice.
“I never asked anybody to give me advice," the New York native says. "If they did, I was scornful of it. When you’re learning, you get so much by osmosis.
“And that’s true with Lewis. We would only be granular with it because I, for one, don’t have that big advice.”
"Murdaugh Murders: The Movie" airs on the Lifetime network.
Bill Pullman stars in "Murdaugh Murders: The Movie."
Movie critic Bruce Miller says Disney's "Wish" has so many mediocre references to past animated films it can’t help but pale in comparison.
