Ever since it was announced that Dirty John — the gripping LA Times true crime podcast — was copping its very own TV series, fans of the poddy have been thirsting over more details.
We already know that Debra Newell, the successful Californian business owner who became entangled with conman “Dirty” John Meehan, will be portrayed on the small screen by Friday Night Lights / Nashville star (and haver of amazing hair), Connie Britton, and playing the titular baddie will be our very own Eric Bana.
And now the people behind the show have given us some new details about how Dirty John will come to life on telly.
At a panel for the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour, showrunner Alexandra Cunningham spilled some tea on what the Dirty John series will delve into. The LA Times reported that Cunningham revealed the show will stick to the same sort of structure as the podcast, “but within those parameters, we’re going deeper on the things maybe the podcast just touched on.”
The showrunner says she had full access to all the research done by Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter Christopher Goffard, who hosted the Dirty John podcast. “Any road I wanted to go down there was probably 500 pages of stuff to read related to that,” Cunningham told the LA Times. “It’s within that that we’re going to play around.”
Executive producer Jeffrey Reiner told the Times: “It’s all about, ‘Who is John?’ We go back in time [and include] things that were not necessarily in the podcast.”
As for the big Walking Dead reference in the podcast — Debra’s daughter Terra was a huge fan and it became a key part of her story — since Dirty John is airing on Bravo and TWD is an AMC property, they will have to tweak that slightly, according to Cunningham.
“We will have zombies in the show. We just wont be name-checking ‘The Walking Dead.’ I would never leave out the zombie part because it is integral to what happens.”
While there’s still no premiere dat as yet, Bravo have released the show’s first TV promo spot, which tbh doesn’t give away anything at all other than some chilling buzzwords and a creepy cover version of Tammy Wynette‘s song Stand By Your Man.
Check it out below:
https://youtu.be/igsz681a_1E
The show has been picked up by Netflix to air outside of the US.
