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Margaret Ratliff only agreed to appear on camera two decades ago, for Jean-Xavier de Lestrades documentary series The Staircase, under extreme circumstances.

In 2001 the woman Ratliff called mom, Kathleen Peterson, was found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs in the familys Durham, North Carolina, home. Sixteen years prior, Ratliffs birth mother, Elizabeth, died under similar circumstances in Germany. After that tragedy in 1985, Elizabeths friend Michael Peterson took Ratliff and her younger sister, Martha, into his home, eventually becoming their legal guardian.

Following Kathleens death, though, Michael could not do much to protect his adopted daughters, then ages 20 and 18. He was busy planning his defense trial after being charged with his late wifes murder. (Michael was found guilty of the crime in 2003. He has since been released from prison after being granted a new trial and submitting an Alford plea.)

A novelist who had run for mayor in Durham, Michael was leery of getting a fair trial. He had publicly attacked local officials on their handling of criminal matters in newspaper columns, and told his children that he felt having cameras document the trial might safeguard the legal proceedings.

At that time, we were afraid he was facing the death penalty, recalls Ratliff in a phone interview with Vanity Fair on Saturday. Before patching Michael into the phone call, Ratliff remembers, I thought, Okay, this is going to help my dad

As Ratliff makes clear in Subject, a documentary she coproduced that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this past weekend, she had no reason to believe that de Lestrades resulting docuseries, The Staircase, would be widely seen. She consented to participating in the project in 2002years before the advent of streaming.

In 2003, Michael was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. With their father behind bars, Ratliff and her siblings did their best to forge ahead, she saystrying to put the disturbing details of Kathleens death, the harrowing trial (one of the longest in North Carolina history), and the docuseries behind them.

We were parent-less in a way. I was just trying to go through the world and go through my masters program and not talk about The Staircase, says Ratliff of the impact of de Lestrades docuseries, which earned rave reviews after its relatively quiet U.S. premiere on the Sundance Channel in 2005.

Everything changed, she says, when Netflix acquired the docuseries in 2018. Immediately, it became accessible to more than 120 million subscribers around the globe. The family had already been recognized because of the docuseries when it was a cult true-crime favorite. (During a surreal sibling holiday spent in Denmark, the only thing showing on the TV at the hotel was The Staircase in English. We felt so strange going to breakfast because people would just stare at us, Ratliff remembers.) Netflixs reach would make them recognizable to a new demographic.

Making matters even more complicated for Ratliff: She had been interested in documentary filmmaking before Kathleens death. After The Staircase debuted on Netflix, Ratliff says she had job interviews where the person questioning her recognized her from the docuseries. The strangest professional experience for Ratliff occurred four years ago, she claims, after she applied for her dream job within Netflixs own documentary department.

There was this amazing assistant position in the documentary department at Netflix, and I had a great call with H.R. and I was super qualified, really excited, says Ratliff. The H.R. person was really excited about me and escalated me very quickly. And then they realized who I was.

More:
The Staircase: For Michael Peterson and Daughter Margaret, the Nightmare Continues With HBO Max - Vanity Fair