'Dirty John' Star Amanda Peet on Betty Broderick and Reexamining Scorned Women

Alexandra Cunningham, really. I think she's really brilliant. I guess when I think about true crime, I don't usually imagine that the story is going to entail an intimate portrait of the decline of a marriage. So, when I readI had never heard of Betty until I read the script. I sort of got Alexandra's perspective and then the tabloid fodder perspective afterwards. So it was really interesting to go in that order.

I think Alexandra wanted to upend that trope and was concerned that [Betty] was mostly known as a woman scorned. It's sort of an intrinsic part of that term that said woman's emotions are somehow unjustified. Alexandra doesn't excuse the fact that Betty Broderick murdered two people. It's not to excuse or justify that but just to really examine what leads someone to that kind of misery and desperation.

Yeah, she's getting her period. I think that was very important. I think Alexandra felt the fact that Betty grew up in the social mores of the '50s in a fairly strict Catholic family really affected how isolated and myopic her world became. Betty was incredibly smart and could have pursued a professional career. But I think mostly women from that era in her socioeconomic place were taught that the most important thing is to become someone's wife and a homemaker.

Mental illness is still stigmatized now, but I think in her day, it was even worse. We know so much more about mental illness now and as bad as it was then. Dan's gaslighting is certainly evident. But Betty often says her world was so overwhelming because she couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that society led her to believe that if she was the perfect homemaker, she'd have the perfect life, and it didn't end up like that for her. So maybe that was the ultimate gaslighting.

I think that is the crux of Betty’s story here. It strikes so many conflicts with the audience that far exceed the question of condoning her behavior.

MissG32

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