BASED on the critically acclaimed nonfiction work of the late Rebecca Godfrey, Hulu’s newest series will take an unflinching look at mean girls and murder, exploring teenage bullying and the media scrutiny that followed.
Hulu’s eight-episode true crime miniseries follows the murder of Canadian teenager Reena Virk through the lens of the teens who killed her, along with writer Rebecca Godfrey and police detective Cam Bentland.
Is Hulu’s Under the Bridge based on a true story?
According to Official Hulu SynopsisUnder the Bridge is about “the 1997 true story of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk, who went to join friends at a party and never returned home.”
“Through the eyes of [Rebecca] Godfrey and a local police officer, the series takes us into the hidden world of the young women accused of the murder – revealing surprising truths about the unlikely killer.”
Although the series is based on the real-life murder of Reena Virk, viewers should also note that the series is based on Godfrey’s 2005 book of the same name.
The book is similar to the series in that it “tracks the events surrounding the 1997 murder of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk by eight of her classmates.”
However, the book is also “based on six years of research and interviews with the accused, which offer insight into the social tensions that provoked the crime and the minds of the teenage killers”, as reported by The book trail.
The book received British Columbia’s Canadian National Non-Fiction Award in 2006.
It was also included in Rolling Stone’s 2017 list of 11 true crime books for music lovers and Men’s Journal’s list of the 10 best true crime books.
12 years after the book’s publication, Godfrey released a follow-up essay for Vice Magazine.
The essay provided readers with an update on the legal fate and current lives of Virk’s two convicted killers, along with the other teenage girls involved in his murder.
Godfrey died of lung cancer in New York City on October 3, 2022, just a week after Hulu announced it would turn his book into a miniseries.
Despite her sudden death, she is still credited as one of the series’ executive producers, having collaborated with Quinn Shephard for nearly three years to adapt her work for the screen.
What happened to Reena Virk?
Reena Virk was a Canadian girl who lived in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada.
Born on March 10, 1983, Virk’s father was an immigrant from India and his mother came from an Indian-Canadian family that converted from Hinduism to the Jehovah’s Witness religion.
Virk, like other teenagers, wanted to be accepted by her peers, striving for popularity despite being seen as an “outsider” at her school.
She was reportedly ostracized by her classmates and relentlessly bullied for her appearance, weight, race, ethnicity and religion.
In 1996, she falsely reported her father for sexual abuse, hoping to be removed from her family and thus no longer confined to their strict rules.
Virk ended up moving out of his family home, first into his grandparents, and then into provincial care for several months.
She, however, eventually dropped the charges and returned home.
On November 14, 1997, Virk was invited to a party near the Craigflower Bridge.
At the party, surrounded by teenagers smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol, Virk was reportedly cornered by a group later dubbed “The Shoreline Six.”
Witnesses recalled seeing the group relentlessly hit, punch and kick Virk, putting out cigarettes and joints on his forehead and body, and even trying to set his hair on fire.
While Virk managed to escape the group and leave the party, she was followed by two members of the original group.
The pair made her take off her shoes and clothes and continued to beat her.
Although the two perpetrators later denied holding her head underwater, they admitted to throwing her unconscious body into the water.
The Shoreline Six then made a pact not to tell anyone what had happened that night.
Despite the pact, rumors began circulating around Shoreline Junior High School, where the perpetrators attended classes, and Virk’s high school, Colquitz.
Even so, the rumors were not resolved, with Virk’s own family and the few friends she had believing she had just run away from home.
When her mother reported her missing to the Saanich Police Department, even the police considered her a runaway.
However, eight days after the party, on November 22, 1997, police used a helicopter to find Virk’s partially clothed body on the shore of George Inlet.
An autopsy revealed that Virk suffered serious injuries, and her head injuries would likely have killed her if she had not drowned.
The coroner, however, ruled that his death was due to drowning.
Six teenagers eventually introduced themselves as the Shoreline Six, with one additional member, a 16-year-old boy named Warren Paul Glowatski, involved in the crime.
The six teenagers received sentences ranging from conditional sentences of 60 days to up to a year in prison.
Glowatski was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in June 1999.
After serving just under nine years of a life sentence, Glowatski was granted temporary unescorted passes by the National Parole Board and was officially released on parole on June 23, 2010.
One of the girls involved in Virk’s murder, Kelly Marie Ellard, was tried three times for the murder and was convicted twice, of second-degree murder.
Ellard, sentenced to life in prison, has regularly appealed her conviction but was recently denied parole in May 2022, when she was 41 years old.
To this day, the case worries detectives and the general public, who can’t seem to agree on the real motives behind the brutal crime.
Some claim the murder was not racially motivated but rather based on “female violence”, while others claim the attack was retaliation based on Virk’s own actions.
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Who is in the cast of Under the Bridge and how can I watch?
Under the Bridge features a cast filled with some of Hollywood’s biggest names, along with some new emerging stars.
The most notable cast member is Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone, known for her portrayal of Mollie Kyle in Martin Scorsese’s 2023 crime drama film Killers of the Flower Moon.
Gladstone stars as Cam Bentland, a local detective who promises to solve the murder of Reena Virk.
Along for the ride is writer Rebecca Godfrey, played by Riley Keough.
Keough is known for her roles in Amazon Prime Video’s Logan Lucky, Zola, The Devil All the Time, and Daisy Jones & the Six.
Isabella Gaspersz, known professionally as Izzy G, stars as Kelly Ellard, while Javon Walton, known for playing Ashtray on the hit HBO series Euphoria, plays Warren Glowatski.
Completing the cast are:
- Chloe Guidry as Josephine Bell (Nicole Cook)
- Michael Buie as George Spiros
- Vritika Gupta as Reena Virk
- Ezra Farouke Khan as Manjit Virk
- Archie Panjabi as Suman Virk
- Aiyana Goodfellow as Dusty Pace
- Anoop Desai as Raj Masihajjar
The eight-episode miniseries is scheduled to premiere on Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
The first two episodes will be available to watch that day, with new episodes available weekly on Wednesdays.
The finale will air on May 29, 2024.
The series will be available to stream and view exclusively on Hulu.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
