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Murdaugh: Death in the Family Showrunner Talks Future, Loose Ends

Showrunner Michael D. Fuller (Locke & Key) spoke with us about a potential season two, cut scenes, Gerald McRaney's performance, and more.

When Michael D. Fuller signed on as co-showrunner for Murdaugh: Death in the Family alongside Erin Lee Carr, one of the biggest challenges was providing adequate time to feature the various members of the Murdaugh family, whose empire in South Carolina had been built across generations. Sadly, you can only fit so much within an eight-episode miniseries. What the two did focus on was expanding on the narrative already built by investigative journalist and podcaster Mandy Matney, played by Brittany Snow in the series, to bring as much of the family's story to screen, especially the two murder victims in mother Maggie Murdaugh (Patricia Arquette, son Paul Murdaugh (Johnny Berchtold), and their accused killer in family patriarch Alex Murdaugh (Jason Clarke). With the finale airing, Fuller spoke to Bleeding Cool about whether there is any room for a possible season two and what he had to cut from the series.

Murdaugh: Death in the Family Co-Showrunner on Series Cuts and Future

Are there elements dangling out there that you could produce enough content for a possible second season, from exposition on the family side to Alex's appeals?

If I've learned anything about this real story, it's never say never or to think that you have a grasp on how it's going to end or which way it's going to go. As you and I sit here today, the finale airing, and everything else, we feel like we've told the story in totality. Anything else that plays out it's through the appeals process or whatever else. Again, that's not to say never say never, because again, you never know how this thing's going to go and how it could break. A new revelation or turn in this obviously real-life saga could happen at any moment. Depending on how things break, I would be open to it, but as it sits here today and what we know we know, I feel we told the story as best we could.

Aside from Stephen's story, were there any other stories or arcs that you dangled, but had to cut?

One of the things we wanted, but you must make these decisions when you get into production, and you've got to find efficiencies, was spending more time with the kids on the night of the boat crash. In real life, they went to a bar, and we mentioned that in the show. It was like being with them in that time and space before the tragedy of that boat crash. That was one of the things when you must make tough decisions.

The other one was, and there were so many we touched on in the show was Gerald McRaney's incredible performance as Randolph, where he speaks to some of the past lore about Big Buster Murdoch and then Randolph Sr., who died on the train tracks. Initially, we had wanted to dramatise some of those moments much the same way we did in episode two ("One is Missing"), where we showed young Alex (Christian Hopper) on campus, crashing his truck and getting out of it.

We had these little moments throughout, and then, you must make these creative decisions. Those are a few of the things where we were able to ultimately still get it in. Gerald McRaney talking about it is probably ultimately better than anything we would have shot anyway, because he's so incredible. There's a lot of lore out there that was intriguing and illuminating for who these people are, but you must pick your spots.

All episodes of Murdaugh: Death in the Family, which also stars Will Harrison, J. Smith-Cameron, Tyner Rushing, Kathleen Wilhoite, Noah Emmerich, and Tommy Dewey, are available to stream on Hulu.

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