New York – The new Paramount+ “Happy Face” series has all the elements of a thread of passionate true crimes: A serial killer, His separate daughter, a career to get an innocent man out of the death corridor. But perhaps the most intriguing part? How it examines the nature of deformation of true crime itself.
“I was less interested in the specific psychology of a serial killer or glorify the murders or see violence against women on the screen,” says Jennifer Cacicio, executive producer and showrunner. “I feel that we have seen it. I was very interested in making a show of true crimes counted through a different lens.”
“Happy Face”, which begins to broadcast on Thursday, is inspired by the true story of Melissa Moore, whose father was a prolific infamous serial killer for attracting smiling faces about letters to the media and prosecutors. He was only 15 years old when he was captured.
Decades later, as an adult with his own children, he is attracted to his orbit while he intends to save an innocent man for a crime his father committed. He also has to tell his daughter the truth about his grandfather.
Protagonist Annaleight Ashford and Dennis Quaid, “Happy Face” is told from a feminine point of view and see how a shameful secret can echo generations. It is also the thrust and the pull of infamy, with horrible crimes that somehow remain an attractive attractiveness.
“There are many crime dramas that I think are very focused on men.
“How is it for the rest of the family when this shameful secret and this series of crimes and these acts of violence exist and what are the domain effects in all those involved?”
Ashford, who obtained a Tony prize nomination playing a serial killer at Broadway in “Sweeney Todd”, plays Moore with tenderness and anger, saying that she was interested in exploring generational trauma.
“It’s one of the worst nightmares,” she says. “The worst nightmare of all is that a family member is a victim.
Moore previously shared his story in the best -selling memoirs, “Shatrtered Silence” and the podcast “Happy Face” 2018, reaching the victims of his father and advocating other members of the family of the murderers. Cacicio was one of several writers interested in telling their history for television.
Cacicio approached Moore with this launch: “If you love someone who is a direct journalist, who will only tell the history of the podcast, you must let someone else do,” he said. “There is also the opportunity to be a bigger story to ask some questions about the real crime.”
Cacicio and Moore, turned out that they had much in common. They were the same age, and the two oldest of three children. Both had close relationships with their parents, who hid other lives: Moore was a murderer and Cacicio fulfilled imprisonment for drug treatment.
“Obviously, crimes are different, circumstances are different.
“A lot of that was really personal for me.
Quaid plays Moore’s father, but unlike other roles that he has taken to involve a living person, he had no intention of meeting the prisoner. He didn’t want to glorify the murderer, but also “happy face” is not that kind of show.
“This is told from Melissa’s point of view, and I think it is really more true than her point of view, because I think she knows him much better than he knows himself,” he says. “I think shows emotions like a child who is trying to talk about a roof.”
Cacicio says that it is time for us to take a look at the explosion in popularity of the true crime, in which women are often the victims, but women are also the main consumers.
“Are we obsessed with these stories because we are trying to protect ourselves in case the worst happens?” She asks. “I read somewhere that it is an act to normalize your own experiences, because it is generally what you are seeing is worse than it has happened to you.
