When They See Us star says the Netflix show "is going to make a lot of people angry”
Ava DuVernay's powerful four-part series When They See Us, tells the story of how five boys of colour were falsely convicted of rape, and how their lives, their families lives and their communities, were torn apart in the wake of one of the most highly-publicised crimes of the 1980s.
In the spring of 1989, Kevin Richardson, 14, Raymond Santana, 14, Antron McCray, 15, Yusef Salaam, 15, and 16-year-old Korey Wise were arrested, convicted, and spent 10 years in prison for the rape of 28-year-old Trisha Meili in Central Park. The series gives these now-men a voice, and dismantles the pejorative collective the Central Park Five that they became known as.
Since the series release, there has been a backlash over then-prosecutor Linda Fairstein's controversial role in the case, as well as provoking criticism from Fairstein herself, over the way she is portrayed in the series.
Boardwalk Empire star Michael K. Williams - who plays the father Antron McCray - has spoken about how he hopes this story makes people angry enough to provoke a conversation about racial injustice and the flawed US justice system.
"I know it's going to make a lot of people angry," Michael told Joy Reid on AM Joy. "I hope we take the anger as a community and start the narrative.
"This is still happening. Although this is 30 years ago, people are still being wrongfully convicted and primarily in communities that look like mine, that look like the communities where these five men came from."
Fairstein - played by Felicity Huffman in the series - ran the sex-crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office, and oversaw the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of the five then-teenagers. The hashtag #CancelLindaFairstein began trending on Twitter, and she has now resigned from the boards of the nonprofit Safe Horizon and Vassar College, and been dropped by her publisher.
Fairstein has also dismissed the series as "so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication."
"You can't give back what these five men lost," the actor said of Fairstein's role in the wrongful convictions. "There is no amount of money that you can give them, there is no amount of people you can fire, you know, that can give these five men what was taken from them. What I would love to see is a public apology.
"No one has apologised to these men yet to my knowledge… But I would hope that that would happen, that [Linda Feinstein] would come to some light or some of these people that had a part in this wrongful conviction would be driven to - would be moved to apologise, at least just say, 'I'm sorry for what you went through.'"
Director Ava DuVernay recently echoed these sentiments, ruminating: "[Fairstein] is part of a system that’s not broken, it was built to be this way. It was built to oppress, it was built to control, it was built to shape our culture in a specific way that kept some people here and some people here. It was built for profit.
"It was built for political gain and power. And it is incumbent on us; it lives off us, our taxpayer dollars, our votes, the goods that we buy that are made inside of prisons. It lives off of our ignorance and we can no longer be ignorant. OK, Linda Fairstein. OK, Elizabeth Lederer. OK, all of these people on this particular case who need to be held accountable."
When They See Us is available to stream on Netflix.
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