Dateline caught up with April Santiago, an associate producer for Friday’s Dateline, to play ‘Fill in the Blank.’ See her answers, above.
Dorothy Newell and Carol Gable are the co-producers of this Friday's show, Deadly Detour, with Josh Mankiewicz. We caught up them while they were finishing the episode to hear more about the story. Read our conversation with them, below.
Dateline: How did you come across the case in this Friday’s report?
Dorothy, Dateline Producer: Our story development team found it, and since I am theoretically in charge of the Atlanta area, they asked me to look into it. I remember calling the police early on and being assured that the case involved was an accident. Oh, well.
Dateline: Without giving anything away, tell us a bit about the story.
Carol, Dateline Producer: It’s really about a wrong turn. Literally. A very successful Atlanta couple and their friend were returning from a relaxing weekend. As they made their way back into Atlanta, the husband believed they had turned into a dangerous area and asked his wife to hand him the revolver he kept in the console. Somehow -- that’s the crux of the case -- the gun fired through the wife’s seat, and she later died. He said it was an accident. The district attorney says it was not.
Dateline: What was the most unusual location you filmed at for this episode?
Carol: For me it was the old Rich’s department store in downtown Atlanta -- not because it’s unusual, but it has so many childhood memories for me. When I was a little girl, my mom would drive us from our small town in South Carolina to shop there. And if it was near Easter, we’d get to ride the “Pink Pig.” The “Pig” was really a simple merry-go-round ride, but we thought it was really cool back then.
Dorothy: The streets of Atlanta in a torrential rainstorm felt pretty unusual, too. We wanted to take the drive that one of our characters took on a particularly fateful night and, as we were getting the car set up, we could see black clouds moving toward us. Sure enough, RIGHT as we were getting ready to pull out of the garage, the rain came down in sheets. Carol kept checking the radar, certain that it would pass. It didn’t. One of the crew told me when it was over: “I thought someone was going to die tonight.”
Dateline: What is the one clue we should be on the lookout for?
Dorothy: The gun.
Carol: It’s all about the gun.
Dateline: What’s the best thing about working on a story with Josh Mankiewicz?
Dorothy: Josh is a really funny guy. He also is a good writer with an interesting writer’s voice. He makes scripts better.
