Court TV is one of the top cable destinations to watch courtroom dramas ranging from defamation suits to murder trials. But in the latter cases, what happens to the killers after the convictions are in, sentences handed down, and they await their fates behind bars?
That’s where Interview With a Killer picks up the narrative. Since its launch last year, the series has been a notable addition to Court TV’s assortment of beyond the courtroom true crime shows. Every episode finds award-winning investigative reporter David Scott sitting down opposite a convicted murderer and walking through the circumstances that led them to where they are now.
To be clear, the series isn’t out to overturn any guilty verdicts. All of the killers interviewed in Interview With a Killer are in “case closed” situations.
“The only requirement is that guilt has to be virtually certain,” Scott confirms to TVNewser in a conversation alongside Court TV head Ethan Nelson. “They don’t have to admit the guilt, but there cannot be any ambiguity.”
Instead of trying to clear their name, most of the subjects spend their hour with Scott talking around his carefully-researched questions into their crime and subsequent punishment. “We have to break through their spin,” the journalist says. “They all come in with an agenda and the clock’s always ticking.”
The clock is also counting down to the show’s Season 2 finale, which airs this Sunday at 8 p.m. and will then be posted on the show’s official YouTube page. Nelson says that platform has been a big viewership portal for the show, with the Season 2 premiere featuring Gary Hilton—a.k.a. the National Forest Serial Killer—hitting 1.7 million views and counting.
“It’s resonating with our audience in a big way,” Nelson notes. “The show sits squarely within our mandate of being your front row seat to justice.”
Ahead of Interview With a Killer’s Season 2 finale, Scott and Nelson discuss how they select their subjects, prepare for interviews, and respond in real time to what could be a killer’s final confession.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
We celebrated the 35th anniversary of Errol Morris’s pioneering true crime documentary The Thin Blue Line last year. Did that movie provide any inspiration for Interview With a Killer?
Ethan Nelson: That’s not what I flash back to. For me, it’s the HBO documentary series The Iceman Confesses from the early 2000s. It was simple, single-camera storytelling with a guy who had a wife and children and yet would go out at night and murder for the mob. His sociopathy was so unbelievable that his pulse rate never raised even as he talked about how he murdered all these people. I just remember being utterly engrossed by that series.
