The new true-crime docuseries “Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese” is now available on Hulu. It details the events surrounding the 2012 kidnapping and murder of Morgantown local Skylar Neese. The Dominion Post sat down with director Clair Titley to discuss her work on the project.
While working on the series, Ms. Titley spent a lot of time in Morgantown, working not only with The Dominion Post and its coverage here but also getting to know the city. She told us, “We spent a lot of time in Morgantown, and I’ve kind of left part of my heart in Morgantown as a result of that. We really wanted Morgantown to become a character in itself. We filmed it in every single season imaginable, so that you get a real sense of this beautiful, beautiful town, and what it’s like.”
The series includes social media posts as well as some diary entries of Skylar’s. Titley wanted to use these to give viewers a sense of who Skylar was. “We wanted Skylar to have a voice, and this was one of the key things early on. She’d left behind this incredible digital archive of tweets and social media posts, but also bits of writing that her parents would allow us some access to. We wanted to incorporate all of that. And we literally did give her a voice so that she can narrate part of her story. And you feel, I hope, that you are really getting to know her as a person. She’s not just a plot device, not just a faceless victim. You really get to know who she was and some of the events that kind of led up to this tragedy.”
Skylar’s parents, Dave and Mary Neese, were also heavily involved in the process of making “Friends Like These.” We asked Titley about working closely with still-grieving families on a project like this. She shared, “It’s a really unusual job as a documentary filmmaker. You’re inserting yourself in people’s lives, and it’s very intense, but there’s always a connection there. I will always have a connection with Dave and Mary. I feel there is something very special there. And maybe one of the hardest things about all of this is the fact that we’ve made this series, and I really feel like I know Skylar so well in so many ways. And, of course, I never got to meet her. Of all the people involved, I didn’t get the opportunity to meet her at all, although I feel I know her so well. We took the absolute utmost care of our contributors and tried to be as respectful as possible.”
As we were wrapping up, we asked Ms. Titley what she learned from this series that she would take into her next project. She told us, “I think working with contributors in such a close way, and building that level of trust. Also, having the space and time which we really had, which was so important, particularly in this age where it’s so easy to do everything remotely. We spent the time to go and meet people face to face, and give people space and time. And I think this project, more than anything, has reinforced how important that is. I think that’s a significant thing that I will take into the next project.”
You can watch the three-part series “Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese” right now on Hulu.
