Hulu optioned Rebecca Godfrey’s Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk back in 2022, and the limited series based on the bestseller is finally set to stream this month. Emmy nominee Riley Keough (Daisy Jones & The Six) stars as the late author of the 2005 true crime novel, and Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) stars as a small town police officer intimately involved in the investigation.
“Under the Bridge is based on acclaimed author Rebecca Godfrey’s book about the 1997 true story of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk (Gupta) who went to join friends at a party and never returned home,” reads Hulu’s synopsis. “Through the eyes of Godfrey (Keough) and a local police officer (Gladstone), the series takes us into the hidden world of the young girls accused of the murder — revealing startling truths about the unlikely killer.”
Author Rebecca Godfrey passed away of lung cancer in October 2022, just weeks after signing the deal with Hulu on an adaptation of her story of Virk’s brutal murder. In a 2019 Q&A with Interview, Godfrey discussed her initial interest in the horrifying case.
“I was living in New York City. This would’ve been in the late ’90s, and I was working on a novel about teenage girls in my hometown of Victoria, British Columbia. Then I started getting all these calls from friends that there had been a murder in Victoria,” explained Godfrey. “I went home soon after and went into the prison. I was just stunned because the girls all looked like normal, cool, young teenage girls, not particularly like killers.”
In addition to Keough and Gladstone, Under the Bridge stars Vritika Gupta as murder victim Reena Virk, with Archie Panjabi and Ezra Faroque Khan playing her parents. The cast also includes Chloe Guidry, Javon “Wanna” Walton, Izzy G., and Aiyana Goodfellow.
Quinn Shephard adapted Godfrey’s book for the limited series and serves as an executive producer. Godfrey has a posthumous executive producer credit. Additional executive producers include Samir Mehta, Liz Tigelaar, Stacey Silverman, Riley Keough, Gina Gammell, and Tara Duncan. Quinn Shephard, Geeta Patel, Kevin Phillips, Catherine Hardwicke, Nimisha Mukerji, and Dinh Thai directed the limited series.
Episode one, “Looking Glass,” and two, “The John Gotti of Seven Oaks,” premiere on April 17, 2024. New episodes follow on Wednesdays.
