KILLER INSTINCT
STARS KEIRA KNIGHTLEY AND CARRIE COON JOIN DIRECTOR MATT RUSKIN TO TELL RACHAEL DAVIS ABOUT NEW FILM BOSTON STRANGLER
ON JUNE 14, 1962, a 55-year-old woman became the first victim of serial killer the Boston Strangler. By January 1964, 13 women were dead, ranging in age from 19 to 85, and more often than not having been sexually assaulted and strangled with their own nylon stockings. This made the Boston Strangler one of the most notorious serial killers of the 20th century.
Telling the story of the Boston Strangler, drawing links between the killings and fearlessly reporting on the crimes, were local journalists Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole. They are the real-life subjects of a new historical crime film from award-winning writer-director Matt Ruskin, starring Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon.
“I think what was so fascinating about this is, this is an incredibly famous case,” says two-time Oscar nominee Keira, who plays Loretta. “I didn’t know very much about it, I’d heard of it. But women’s role in exposing [it], in linking the crime, was what has largely been forgotten, or taken out of the story altogether. So it felt very important to face back into it.”
The 37-year-old British star of films including Bend It Like Beckham and Love Actually adds: “They were the two that doggedly went after this, and they really understood the importance to the female community in Boston.
“And I think it really highlighted for me the importance of having female investigative journalists, because the stories that they choose to tell will sometimes be different from their male colleagues, and how important it is to have those voices in positions of power.”
The story being centred on the female investigative journalists was also important to Matt, who helmed 2017’s Crown Heights.
He explains: “The film is not just about Loretta’s reporting, but about her relationship with her family and with Jean Cole [played by Carrie] as she worked tirelessly to chase down the biggest story of her career.
“They were working to keep women informed at a time when the police department was coming up short, and juggling the rest of their lives while doing so.
“It was important to show not only their commitment to their work but also the personal challenges and obstacles they encountered at a time when there were not a ton of women in the newsroom.” At the start of the film, Loretta is a lifestyle reporter for Boston’s Record-American newspaper but she longs to take on bigger, more serious stories. A sexist newsroom culture is getting in the way of her ambitions, and her personal responsibilities as a mother of three in the early 1960s combine with societal conventions that expect her to put her family and husband first, before herself and her career. However, Loretta isn’t put off that easily. When she notices stories about three separate women all found strangled, she convinces her editors and superiors to allow her to profile the victims, hoping to discover whether they might be connected.
It is, says Atonement star Keira, “a horrific story of the brutality of the male psyche and how disturbed and awful it can be through the eyes of two women”.
She adds: “It’s a fast-paced story, and it’s a very tricky story to tell because there are many different twists and turns in it.” Along the way, her character Loretta finds an ally in Jean, a newcomer to the newsroom following the RecordAmerican merger with Boston’s Sunday Advertiser, but who has a wealth of experience in investigative journalism. The two women may have different approaches to journalism – Loretta’s more likely to elbow her way into male-dominated spaces while Jean will stay between the lines, keep her head down and play by the rules to get what she needs – but they nonetheless develop mutual respect and rapport in their work.
The Leftovers star Carrie, 42, reflects on the roles she and Keira play as the talented female journalists in a very male-dominated industry.
“I think what I enjoyed about it was working with Keira, because Keira is a fellow working mom in an industry that is famously onerous when it comes to the pressures it puts on family and those expectations,” says Carrie.
“And it was really nice to look across the table and know that I had a compassionate scene partner who could see that I had not slept all night and didn’t know what we were doing. And also could sympathise with the idea that, as young actresses starting out, we had all the time in the world to prepare – I don’t know what we were doing, because now I don’t have any time to prepare, because I have a household to take care of and two kids! “And so I really have to rely on material that’s strong on the page and trust my film-maker. “In Matt Ruskin we have a very credible filmmaker who was really interested not in the salacious details of the case, but in exposing the fact that these women had been erased from the history of the case. And that was something I knew I could trust.” The American actress, who also recently appeared in HBO’s glossy, period drama series The Gilded Age, adds: “There’s also, of course, the tacit understanding of what it was to be one of those women in Boston. “They were deeply, deeply afraid for their safety. They were getting death threats at home. Jean had already experienced that just from covering a mayor’s race early in her career – she was getting death threats because she was a woman in a man’s sphere.”
Matt says of his focus on the women who devoted themselves to reporting on the murders and highlighting their connections: “I was drawn to telling a story about these two journalists rather than, say, the detectives who were in charge of the investigation because I think that good journalism is really important – now as much as ever. “I always want my films to have some layer of substance to them, some value beyond just entertainment.”
The story of the Boston Strangler is, intrinsically, a Boston story, so it follows that Matt’s film was shot in and around the Massachusetts city. “In terms of the look and feel for the film, we wanted to create something that felt authentic, that really transported people back to this time,” he says.
“Boston is a very different city these days. We were lucky enough to be able to shoot in some of the old neighbourhoods, but a lot of that is gone, so we had to recreate quite a bit of it.”
They were the two that doggedly went after this, and they really understood the importance to the female community in Boston Keira Knightley on the journalists reporting on the Boston Strangler