Lesli Linka Glatter On The Unique Challenges During Filming ‘Love & Death’

Lesli Linka Glatter has directed some of the best series on television, but while she was working on the HBO Max limited series Love & Death, she had a once-in-a-career experience.

It was her first time collaborating with David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies, The Undoing), who created and wrote the seven-episode true-crime drama. They were shocked when, two months into filming Love & Death, they learned Nick Antosca and Robin Veith had the go-ahead to tell the same story of Texas housewife and mother Candace “Candy” Montgomery, who was accused of murdering her lover’s wife, Betty Gore, in Wylie, TX, on June 13, 1980. Their five-episode version Candy starred Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey.

“It’s crazy. I’ve never had something like this happen. We were all stunned,” Glatter explained in a recent interview. “We were just shocked. It was so weird for all of us because we were already shooting, so it was like, ‘How can they do this? Why would they do this?’ It’s a wild one. I’ve certainly never been in this position.”

Kelley based Love & Death on a two-part investigative series published in Texas Monthly in 1984 entitled “Love and Death in Silicon Prairie” and Jim Bloom and John Atkinson’s 2018 book “Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs.”

“We had the rights to the articles and the book. It’s public domain material, but we thought we were pretty well covered, or as covered as you can be,” Glatter sighed. “We decided not to rush it out there to try and compete. We wanted to give it a little space.”

Glatter, president of the Directors Guild of America, directed five episodes. She’s known for her extraordinary work on hit series, including Homeland, The Morning Show, and Mad Men.

Betty’s murder has gotten attention over the years due to the gruesome nature of the crime and the fact that a woman committed it. Candy struck Betty 41 times with a wood-splitting ax. When she was arrested, Candy was 30 years old and a wife and mother of two young children. Ultimately, she was found not guilty on October 30, 1980, by a jury of nine women and three men who believed her self-defense claims. Her attorneys also claimed a childhood trauma triggered her rage and violence that day.

“They didn’t find her innocent. They found her not guilty,” Glatter points out, adding she had no contact with the real Candy, who is now in her seventies and reportedly living in Georgia.

“We wanted to tell an American tragedy and a character-based story that wasn’t just about how this happened but why it happened. It is the dark side of the American dream. I was interested that things weren’t what they appeared to be. You have to look deeper than what’s on the surface. There was so much going on inside Candy. It’s incredibly complicated, and the crime was so violent. Exploring that in a real way, not in a salacious way, interested me. What pushes the most normal person to that depth? How does that happen?”

Candy and Betty thought they were doing everything right, and Glatter says they were very much products of their time. “It’s about life in the late-1970s when people got married at 22, had kids, moved to the suburbs for a better life, and the church was their social network. Unfortunately, Candy had a hole in her heart and soul that was a mile wide. It’s a very psychological story. I was fascinated by the giant disconnect between Candy’s public and private self, which I don’t think was uncommon for women then. She was deeply troubled, and this was not a time of therapy.”

They got their first casting picks with Elizabeth Olsen and Lily Rabe as Candy and Betty, respectively. Jesse Plemons, Patrick Fugit, Tom Pelphrey, Krysten Ritter, Keir Gilchrist, and Elizabeth Marvel round out the cast.

Filming the murder scene was emotionally draining for Glatter, Olsen, and Rabe. It took roughly three days, and though all had previous experience filming violent scenes, this was inarguably tough. “I can say without a doubt that it was a horrible experience for all of us,” Glatter explained. “And we wanted it to be. We didn’t want to glorify anything. We tried to be very specific in how we dressed the scene down to the details of what was in the laundry room; the dog bowls covered in blood, the book of nursery rhymes, and a training toilet. What hit you was it was so up close and personal. It was two women in this small laundry room. It was horrible. I’ve never gone home feeling the way I did. The three of us would hold each other and weep. It was so intense.”

Glatter doesn’t believe Candy went there to kill Betty that day. “A series of things led up to it. It might never have happened if Candy had just walked out the door when they started arguing. We’ll never know.”

It was imperative to Glatter that she not let Candy off the hook. “I have a lot of compassion for her and Betty. Both were trapped. There’s also a tragedy to be explored in a culture that fostered a collective inability to express feelings. I wanted to explore that, not just tell a story about a horrible murder. We wanted viewers to fall in love with Candy. She was the life of the party, but she was not all that she appeared to be. We needed an actress that could thread that very delicate needle. Elizabeth had everything we’d hoped for. I would look through the camera at her eyes, and I felt like I saw the world.”

Of the brutality of the crime, Glatter says we don’t know Candy’s damage. “Something clicked because 41 times…to pick up an ax and hit someone once…I picked up that ax, and it’s heavy! To raise that thing above your head isn’t easy. I could only imagine that Candy was horrified and disgusted. I think she was in shock afterward. Then she pretended nothing happened. I think she wished nothing had happened, but it did.”

Does she believe Candy’s version of what happened on that fateful day? “I believe she believes it. There are always two sides to every story, and we’ll never know Betty’s side.”