Interview: Vritika Gupta, Chloe Guidry, Javon Walton and Aiyana Goodfellow on ‘Under the Bridge’
It would be an understatement to say that there has been a steady increase in true crime-related content within the past decade. From Ryan Murphy‘s Monster, a borderline-exploitative portrait of Jeffrey Dahmer and his victims, to a number of popular Netflix docuseries, such as Making a Murderer and Tiger King – and even more comedic shows such as Only Murders in the Building and Based on a True Story, both of which attempt to skewer true crime obsessives to varying degrees of success – true crime has never been more popular or relevant. The latest show attempting to capitalize on the momentum of the genre is Hulu series Under the Bridge, hailing from creator Quinn Shephard and executive producer Samir Mehta.
Under the Bridge is based on acclaimed author Rebecca Godfrey’s book about the 1997 murder/killing of fourteen-year old Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) who went to join friends at a party and never returned home. Through the eyes of Godfrey (Riley Keough) and a local police officer (Lily Gladstone), the series takes us into the hidden world of the young girls accused of the murder — revealing startling insights about the unlikely killer.
However, Under the Bridge ultimately succeeds where other shows failed, particularly in the way it portrays the victim that lies at the center of its tragic story. The character of Reena, a lost, misguided young girl attempting to find her place in the world, is handled with the utmost care and nuance; the show wisely – and righteously – focuses on Reena as a character and a person rather than just a victim, diving deep into her turbulent childhood and tough teenage years. Not only does the show understand that Reena is not the perfect victim, it also understands that the perfect victim does not exist – and by portraying Reena as a complex, multi-dimensional person rather than an archetype or symbol, it manages to successfully sidestep many of the pitfalls that other true crime projects find themselves victim to.
A bulk of that has to do with Gupta’s incredibly nuanced portrayal of Reena, which perfectly captures not only the darker aspects of her short life but also some of the lighter moments, particularly her bond with her uncle and her love for music. “I really focused on reading Rebecca’s book and really understanding her viewpoint on not just Reena but the girls and Warren,” says Gupta of her preperation for the role. “Reading Manjit [Gupta, Reena’s father]’s book on how he viewed Reena as his daughter was also really important to me to understand who she was.” One of the elements the show also focuses on is Reena’s friendship with Dusty (Aiyana Goodfellow), one of the girls Reena met while temporarily staying at a foster home. While the friendship eventually sours, the two develop a close connection before the tragedy occurs.
“It was so much fun working with Aiyana,” gushes Gupta of her co-star. “She’s such a wonderful actress and we just went through a really good time bonding together. We’ve bonded about a lot of things. We bonded about our favorite YouTube channel, we talked about what type of dog we’re like. There are so many funny things that we all talked about and it was so much fun to bond and have that friendship off camera so we can have it on camera as well.”
Goodfellow also drew from her real-life experience as a youth doula – a person trained to advise, inform, and offer emotional and physical comfort to youth – in order to prepare for the show, which sensitively explores how the foster system can let children down. “I was writing my second book, Innocence and Corruption, which is about the oppression of children,” says Goodfellow. “I was editing it whilst we were filming and I think that the scripts were definitely an influence on me. The scripts explore the stories of young people who have been neglected and abandoned by society, by the state, and that’s something that I write and talk about a lot as a youth doula. I support a lot of young people in navigating those experiences and feeling empowered, even without any social power, it was really interesting for me to explore it by embodying Dusty’s character.”
The young perpetrators involved in the tragic case are also handled with care and empathy by the show’s creative team. While they’re never actually portrayed sympathetically – that lens is saved only for Reena, and rightfully so – the show paints them as victims of circumstance, young children pushed into situations that they couldn’t escape or outrun. That couldn’t be more apparent than with the way it deals with Josephine and Warren, portrayed by Chloe Guidry and Euphoria star Javon Walton respectively, two of the perpetrators of the crime. “At the end of the day, we’re playing roles here so you have to be able to tap into these characters and really dive deep,” says Walton. “When you’re on set, it’s game time. You’ve got to be ready to go there for that and then when you’re off-set, you get to have your light-hearted moments, you get to build chemistry with your castmates, but when you have a good cast, it definitely helps with that for sure.”
While a lot of information surrounding the case is publicly available to read, there isn’t much that truly dives into the psyches of the perpetrators, most of who went into hiding following their convictions and eventual release. “There was definitely pressure to portray the story the best you could,” says Guidry of her experience preparing for the show. “Rebecca Godfrey’s book was beautiful and it really helped me. There wasn’t much information but just finding documents that you could read was really helpful, but we also had to make it our own.” And while the real-life Warren Glowatski is still alive today, Walton says he also didn’t have much access to any background information that could’ve helped them prepare for the show. “There definitely wasn’t too much information out there because it happened when they were a lot younger,” he says. “So a lot of stuff was hidden, but we were able to find a decent amount to help us build our roles.”
In addition to Gupta, Goodfellow, Guidry and Walton, the show also features an all-star cast of veteran actors, particularly Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone, who portray Rebecca Godfrey and Cam Betland, a police officer attempting to solve Reena’s case, respectively. “Working with them was great,” says Walton of his experience working with them. “They’re super talented. They’ve been doing some pretty big stuff recently and I felt like I had good chemistry with both of them. I definitely enjoyed working with them. I really enjoyed working with everybody on the show.” It’s a sentiment Guidry says she more than she shares, especially since Under the Bridge is one of the first big projects she’s worked on as an actress. “They were so genuine and so comforting,” she says. “When you go into something like this, it can be scary but they met us with open arms and they were so welcoming.”
Ultimately, the cast say they learned a lot from the process of making that show, particularly when it comes to bullying and how it can cause a ripple effect that stays with us for years to come. It’s a message they hope audiences will also take from the show after they experience it. “I hope the audience is haunted by Reena’s story and that it challenges their sense of humanity,” says Gupta. “I hope this story really encourages those purposeful conversations for everyone to really understand what bullying is, and how you should never judge someone because you haven’t even lived a second in their life.”
New episodes of Under the Bridge air every Wednesday on Hulu.