Warning: This article contains spoilers for all 13 episodes of The Staircase on Netflix

True-crime series The Staircase might have only dropped on Netflix a week ago, but it's actually the culmination of 16 years' worth of work for filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade.

The 13-part series tells the story of Michael Peterson, a novelist living in Durham, North Carolina who was put on trial for the murder of his wife Kathleen. Peterson insists that Kathleen fell down the staircase in their home, but ends up spending eight years in jail, despite the best efforts of his lawyer David Rudolf.

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After a long spell behind bars, blood-spatter analyst Duane Deever – whose testimony was crucial in convincing the jury to put Peterson away – ends up discredited after his questionable practices are exposed.

But rather than face another lengthy retrial, one which could still land him back in jail, Peterson ultimately decides to take an 'Alford plea' – in which a defendant does not actually admit guilt, but still pleads guilty, in the acknowledgement that the evidence is substantial enough for a conviction (whatever the truth may be).

De Lestrade originally made eight episodes of The Staircase from 2001 to 2004, a follow-up in 2010 and a final three episodes completed the story in 2018.

Now, in a candid new interview with Digital Spy, he reflects on the series as a whole, responding to some of its biggest controversies, as well as revealing if he thinks Michael would have won a retrial, and whether he's finally done with The Staircase for good.

You kept coming back to The Staircase over a period of 16 years – was there ever a period before now where you thought "I'm done"?

"I was sure at the end of the first eight hours that I would be following the case until the end, until the justice system will give an answer to the case – a definitive answer to the case. But at some point, I thought, after… in 2009 or 2010, when Michael Peterson was in prison …six, seven years, and he lost all of the appeals, I thought, 'That's finished. The guy will die in prison.'"

With Michael having taken a plea and won his freedom, is that the end of the story? Are you definitively ruling out any more of The Staircase?

"Yes. Now, the judge has given the final answer, and nobody can come back to that. So that's the end of the process for us, to shoot. Sometimes I wish that some other step could be introduced in the court room that we could shoot. But it was not. So yes, it's finished."

When you started out, did you feel there was a responsibility on your part to deliver an answer as to whether Kathleen was murdered?

"At the beginning, the purpose was really to follow the way the justice system would treat that case. It was from that point of view. I had never been looking for the truth, or doing our own investigation. Never.

"I was looking at the justice system. And when the verdict came, to me it was like a shock. In fact, in the crew, we were not expecting a guilty verdict. Maybe we were a little bit naïve [ laughs ] but we were not expecting that.

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"Following the five-month trial, the DA did a very good job, but there was reasonable doubt. That's really why I said, 'OK, I have to follow that story to the end. I will do it. I will do it until the end because I really want to know what will happen to the case. Not only to Michael Peterson, but to the case.'"

Michael himself has said that he doesn't think he would have got a reprieve if you hadn't been filming the original trial. How do you feel about having become part of the narrative, influencing it, rather than just observing?

"That's documentaries. If a documentary filmmaker is telling you, 'We never influenced what happened,' that's bullshit. Even if you don't want to influence it, your presence changes the way that people react.

"Your presence changes the way people will even work. Maybe they will work harder on the case because we're shooting everything. Maybe the judge will be more cautious about all the decisions, and the prosecution, of course... Obviously we didn't change the decision of the jury, of course.

"But yes, after, in a way, we became part of the story, because we were there. For example, what we can see in the hearing when Michael Peterson had been released, what David Rudolf is showing to the judge, they're materials we gave to him – because he couldn't have access to the witness [Duane Deaver].

"So we were shooting someone showing to the judge our own footage. That's amazing."

The access that you were granted throughout has been incredible, but were there ever moments where either the family or the authorities didn't allow you to film?

"Yeah. In fact, my purpose at the beginning, I really wanted to shoot, in an equal way, the defence and the prosecution. We talked to the defence and the prosecution, explaining the project, and I was ready to have two teams, two crews – one crew for the defence, and one crew for the prosecution.

"But we didn't do that. We started shooting with the prosecution, and after four months, the prosecution stopped the collaboration – they stopped the shooting. That was the first stop.

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"And of course, at the beginning, it was quite hard to shoot Michael Peterson in his house, with his family. He had no problem with us shooting conversations with him and David, or with the experts – so all of the legal process.

"But in his house, with his family, at the beginning, he said, 'No, no. I don't want to expose my life. I don't want to expose my children.' But I thought, 'We have to.'"

It's crucial, isn't it?

"It's crucial. We have to. So it took four months, or nearly four months, before we were able to shoot in the house.

"The other difficulty was with David Rudolf, because, yes, we had incredible access, but there is a client privilege when a client is speaking with his lawyer – the conversation is a secret conversation. We can't know about it. But if you have a third party watching that, the privilege doesn't apply anymore.

"David Rudolf was afraid that because we were shooting, and were present, the DA could seize our material and watch it. And he tried."

Really?

"Yes. He tried. He tried, and we were sending all of our material to Paris, somewhere nobody could know.

"The only [other] way to avoid that was… at the beginning, David Rudolf said to us, 'OK, I will allow you to shoot everything, but you have to be my employees. If you are my employees, you are part of the defence team.'"

And so the privilege still applies?

"Yes. But that's not possible. It can't be! [ laughs ] So we had to turn around and we said to David, 'OK, every tape, when we finish every tape, we'll send it by FedEx to Paris. Nobody can see it.'"

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The reveal of Michael's bisexuality seemed to colour the jury's opinion of him. Do you think now, in 2018, that revelation would have such an impact?

"We are talking about 2002. It's not so far back."

No, but things have changed in that short space of time, haven't they?

"Yes, but… in Durham? It's a funny thing about Durham. It's in the Deep South, but also, you have three or four very good American colleges – Duke, Chapel Hill... these are very good universities. There is a concentration of people who have a PhD – it's one of the higher places in the States [for that].

"So it's very balanced. In the jury, you have a kind of mixture of that.

"But yes, for sure, what the prosecution tried to do during the trial was say, 'OK, we don't have the evidence to prove that he killed his wife. But we are trying to prove to you that he is the kind of person who may have killed his wife.'

"They were stressing on the pornography, all the emails, the exchanges, the pictures – the closing argument when she [then-assistant district attorney Freda Black] was showing the picture to jury, and saying that it's 'pure filth'.

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"It was obvious: 'This is a guy who is saying he had a very good relationship... but he was doing that?'

"That's why she was there, to do that. And of course, the jury is being very influenced by this kind of argument. I hope – I hope – that today it would be different. But I'm not really sure."

Michael ended up taking the plea. Did you sympathise with that decision? If the case had gone back to trial, how do you think that would have unfolded?

"I was very like David Rudolf, because David wanted to go back to the trial, to win the trial. He wanted to win, in a courtroom. But you never know, in a trial, what will happen.

"I think, I thought, the prosecution would have a very hard time getting a conviction."

So you think Michael would have been found not guilty if it had gone back to trial?

"Yes. He would have been found not guilty, I think. Because with Duane Deaver and the court of appeal… a lot of stuff was revealed during these 15 years that was putting the prosecution in not a good shape, not in a good condition to really win a new trial.

"But they decided to take the plea, and I respect that, of course. I respect that."

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[Michael Peterson with Jean-Xavier de Lestrade]

If you now could go back and give yourself one piece of advice before embarking on The Staircase, what advice would you give yourself?

"Don't go there. Don't do it! Don't do it [ laughs ]. You don't know long it will be. It will be a very long journey. Because it's been a long journey. It's been an obsession, and also a curse, in a way.

"It was always a very heavy weight on my shoulders. I would always have the case of Michael Peterson, the family, all the people involved, somewhere in my head – and knowing that, at some point, I would have to come back to Durham to shoot something.

"So yes, I'm very happy to have done it, but I don't want to go back. [ laughs ]."

The Staircase is streaming now on Netflix

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