Welcome to You Can't Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix.

I'm Ray Vada and I am hosting this week's episode.

Here on You Can't Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix original true crime stories with special guests.

This month we're revisiting the iconic documentary The Staircase.

After airing in France in 2004, the original documentary series had not one but two follow-ups.

And last year, together for the first time,

Netflix released all 13 episodes.

The staircase follows the trials of Michael Peterson,

a novelist in Durham, North Carolina

who is accused of murdering his wife, Kathleen.

And French director Jean-Zavir de Lestrade

has been there every step of the way,

filming Michael Peterson, his family,

and his defense team for over 15 years.

We wanted to revisit the staircase one year later and talk to the director about what the documentary has meant to him over the years.

And what he thinks about the growing trend of true crime that he helped pioneer.

We brought in self-proclaimed staircase mega-fan and host of the long-form podcast, Aaron Lammer,

to interview on Xavier. So the first movie of yours that was distributed in America is murder on a Sunday morning,

but I know from your Wikipedia page

that you had done stuff before then.

How did the Michael Peterson story first come to you?

How did you become aware of it?

...