Latest news with #FiddlerontheRoof
Sydney Morning Herald
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch went to war. Then the fun started
From the start, this interview is in grave danger of running completely out of control. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch are here to talk about their roles as a disintegrating couple in Jay Roach's The Roses which – just to put this right up front – is a comic tour-de-force for the both of them. Our slot is short (although, since nobody is prepared to stop talking, we run over time) and supposed to be strictly 'film-focused', but somehow we jump from what Colman is seeing tonight at the theatre (Fiddler on the Roof) to TV shows they're both watching, with some insider tips from Colman on the best episodes of The Bear. They interrupt and talk over each other. 'I'm sorry,' says Colman, genuinely apologetic. 'We haven't seen each other today.' They were friends, but had never worked together before making this film. Of course, they are two of the brightest stars in the British film firmament: Colman won the Oscar as best actress in 2019 for playing a fabulously vulgar Queen Anne in The Favourite, while Cumberbatch is Sherlock, Dr Strange and a good many other dramatic characters. They are also, unusually for any kind of star, middle-aged: Colman is 51, while Cumberbatch is 49. 'Luckily, we've managed to stay friends,' Colman said in a similarly freewheeling interview in Vanity Fair. 'That's the fear: that you like each other, and what if you don't get on when you're actually on set? But it was lovely.' The Roses is ostensibly a remake of the 1989 critical and commercial hit The War of the Roses. It was directed by Danny DeVito and starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. It was not lovely; watching it now, it barely feels like a comedy at all. At its centre was a wealthy couple whose marriage was rapidly souring into a permanent state of rage. Nobody in it was remotely likeable. Douglas plays Oliver, an ambitious lawyer with more than a whiff of Gordon Gekko about him. His trophy wife Barbara – a former gymnast – expends far too much creative energy on constructing the perfect home, learning to hate him along the way. Worst of all – spoiler alert – their dog is a casualty of their fighting. Once you kill off a canine character, you're on different turf. The source material for both films was a 1981 novel by prolific popular fiction writer Warren Adler. Cumberbatch read that too. 'It's really bleak,' he says. 'It's really a diminishing thing from what the story was named after, which was obviously a bloody civil war, to the book which was brilliant but incredibly dark.' He thinks he first saw the Douglas-Turner film in his teens; he watched it again before they started making The Roses. 'I remembered it as much funnier,' he says. 'But then I was young and I hadn't had a relationship. I look at it now and go wow, that's pretty … tough and awful.' The Roses strikes such a different note that they don't see it as a remake. Theo and Ivy are equal partners – he is an architect, she is a chef – whose equality is sundered when she opens a restaurant that becomes the buzziest of the year. As Ivy makes the leap into TV stardom, Theo's career nosedives after an unfortunate accident with a misjudged roofing feature. With nothing to do, he sets about building his dream home on a clifftop block Ivy has been able to buy. Ivy, meanwhile, becomes the family provider and outsider, forlorn when she sees how marginal her parenting role has become but too over-committed to do anything about it. Loading The script is the work of Australian writer Tony McNamara, who wrote The Favourite along with the television series The Great and Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos' wild follow-up to The Favourite, Poor Things. 'What Tony has done is take it somewhere else,' says Colman. 'There is more love in it.' The central relationship is full of wit, fun and warmth; when it morphs into hostility, the smart dialogue gives way to a crazed mayhem that could have been devised by Buster Keaton. 'When you're watching it, you're rooting for them,' she says. 'I think people are thinking 'ooh, I hope they get back together'. I hope they think that. Did you think that?' I did. Several sideways shifts help make that happen. Given the opportunity, McNamara will always steer towards the edge of absurdity. The initial meet-cute between Theo and Ivy, for example, turns into a burlesque romp when, about two minutes after meeting in the kitchen of a restaurant where he is trying to escape a boring dinner, they briskly agree to have sex in the fridge. It is clear, both to them and us, that this is the start of the rest of their lives. You gasp, then laugh, at the impossible speed of these proceedings. Not so impossible, says Colman. 'I fell in love with my husband the second I saw him. Proper thunderbolts,' she says. She met Ed Sinclair when she was 20 and they were in the same play; they have been together ever since. Cumberbatch is married to Sophie Hunter, a director and playwright. 'And I did with mine, but I took 17½ years to get round to doing something about it,' he says. 'Awwww,' sighs Colman, sentimentally. Wasn't that a long wait? 'I was a tongue-tied public schoolboy, I didn't know what that was. What they were. You know. What is a woman? But I figured it out and put it to her that we could be more than friends and there we are.' One specific twist, which slants the whole relationship between the Roses, is the fact of their Englishness. Theo and Ivy live in Northern California (actually filmed in Devon, England: it was cheaper and closer to home). Their snappy banter sets them apart from American friends like Amy (Kate McKinnon) who calls herself 'an empath' without irony. 'I thought that was a brilliant stroke, for us to remain English, like fish out of water,' says Colman. 'And I'm eternally grateful, because my American accent is not that good. You haven't heard it,' she adds, turning to Cumberbatch. 'It's awful.' Barbed badinage is not an exclusively English commodity, as Cumberbatch points out. 'Think of Howard Hawks films like His Girl Friday or the films of Billy Wilder. But we do get pigeonholed that way. The invective here is very sharp and cruel, but disguised with wit. In America you get the 'roast', which is just kind of 'f--- you, you're horrible, you motherf---er'. It's unbelievable what they throw at each other. But it's the same with us; we just think we get away with it by being clever around it.' Englishness is inherently amusing; Englishness is charming. So he has found, indeed, in real life. 'You're feted for your accent and you're like 'come on, really? It's just an accent, you know.' But you can get away with speeding tickets and all sorts by just saying 'Ew, I'm so sorry, I'm English!'. Go a big Hugh Grant and they're 'oh, OK, don't do it again'. Well, you know, I say 'they'. That one cop. Better not write that. Don't try this at home, English people!' Colman is giggling. 'I do find myself going over-English when I'm there,' she admits. Underlying the Roses' verbal thrust and parry, however, is a relationship unravelling largely because nobody pays attention to it. However bizarre the battle becomes, their complacency is immediately recognisable and relatable. They think they will be fine because they always are. 'In any long relationship, you need to work on it,' says Cumberbatch. 'They are faced with huge challenges, but they bring the same fun-loving, let's-give-it-a-go attitude to this huge shift in their dynamic. 'I think this schism, not talking, losing the dialogue between you so that you're not able to find the funny and the glue and the sex and the sorries and the I-hear-you-and-understand-you, is where the separation and resentment comes in.' All that talk about having it all, he adds with feeling: that's not possible. 'You can't have it all without a cost. And the cost is that you have to keep working at it, making decisions, investing in it. So you can have it all – a career, children, a love life, a partnership that lasts – but you have to accept the cost and find a balance within that.' What The Roses is not about, as they both stress with fervour, is a home being wrecked because a wife is earning more than her husband; clearly, they both think Theo and Ivy are better than that. 'It pains me to think that people are still saying 'oh, it all goes wrong when the woman is successful'. I sort of want to punch people in the nose when I hear that,' says Colman. 'It's about the couple having pressures on them as a couple.' The two actors swap examples of how their characters let each other down, then hasten to make allowances for each other. 'He weaponises knowing more about the kids than she does,' Colman observes. 'Oh, grossly!' agrees Cumberbatch at once. Colman wondered in their Vanity Fair interview if they 'mucked about too much' on set. 'Poor Jay was probably saying 'it's like herding cats'.' On the contrary, said Roach; their energy fed the mood. 'There is a little bit of a joyful keeping the ball in the air,' he said. 'They trust each other so much that they're willing to go a little off the script or a little into dangerous territory.' Which is not so surprising from Colman, who first came into modest prominence in sketch comedy on The Peep Show, then brought her unerring comic timing to the Lanthimos films. By contrast, there aren't a lot of laughs in Cumberbatch's CV, which I now find surprising. 'That's so true!' exclaims Colman. 'How does that happen?' Cumberbatch thanks her, looking slightly abashed. It's true, he says, that he has done almost no comedy on screen, not that he's done a musical or a horror, either. He hopes all these things will come to him. 'But I've done stuff which has a lot of funny in it. Sherlock and Dr Strange are the two obvious big ones but even something like [Alan] Turing [in The Imitation Game ]: there is humour scattered through everything I do that hopefully shows I can be funny.' And he has done comedies on stage, where an audience soon tells you whether you're funny or not. 'But that can be bad,' he says, as Colman nods vigorously. 'Because if you start chasing the laugh you got last night, it goes dead. And then you're thinking 'what went wrong?'' Over to Colman. 'And then you start over-egging it.' He picks up the thread again. 'Because with that fourth wall, you know what's there. And it's quite fun not knowing – or pretending not to know, because this script is laugh-out-loud. You'd have to be really bad not to make this funny.'
The Age
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch went to war. Then the fun started
From the start, this interview is in grave danger of running completely out of control. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch are here to talk about their roles as a disintegrating couple in Jay Roach's The Roses which – just to put this right up front – is a comic tour-de-force for the both of them. Our slot is short (although, since nobody is prepared to stop talking, we run over time) and supposed to be strictly 'film-focused', but somehow we jump from what Colman is seeing tonight at the theatre (Fiddler on the Roof) to TV shows they're both watching, with some insider tips from Colman on the best episodes of The Bear. They interrupt and talk over each other. 'I'm sorry,' says Colman, genuinely apologetic. 'We haven't seen each other today.' They were friends, but had never worked together before making this film. Of course, they are two of the brightest stars in the British film firmament: Colman won the Oscar as best actress in 2019 for playing a fabulously vulgar Queen Anne in The Favourite, while Cumberbatch is Sherlock, Dr Strange and a good many other dramatic characters. They are also, unusually for any kind of star, middle-aged: Colman is 51, while Cumberbatch is 49. 'Luckily, we've managed to stay friends,' Colman said in a similarly freewheeling interview in Vanity Fair. 'That's the fear: that you like each other, and what if you don't get on when you're actually on set? But it was lovely.' The Roses is ostensibly a remake of the 1989 critical and commercial hit The War of the Roses. It was directed by Danny DeVito and starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. It was not lovely; watching it now, it barely feels like a comedy at all. At its centre was a wealthy couple whose marriage was rapidly souring into a permanent state of rage. Nobody in it was remotely likeable. Douglas plays Oliver, an ambitious lawyer with more than a whiff of Gordon Gekko about him. His trophy wife Barbara – a former gymnast – expends far too much creative energy on constructing the perfect home, learning to hate him along the way. Worst of all – spoiler alert – their dog is a casualty of their fighting. Once you kill off a canine character, you're on different turf. The source material for both films was a 1981 novel by prolific popular fiction writer Warren Adler. Cumberbatch read that too. 'It's really bleak,' he says. 'It's really a diminishing thing from what the story was named after, which was obviously a bloody civil war, to the book which was brilliant but incredibly dark.' He thinks he first saw the Douglas-Turner film in his teens; he watched it again before they started making The Roses. 'I remembered it as much funnier,' he says. 'But then I was young and I hadn't had a relationship. I look at it now and go wow, that's pretty … tough and awful.' The Roses strikes such a different note that they don't see it as a remake. Theo and Ivy are equal partners – he is an architect, she is a chef – whose equality is sundered when she opens a restaurant that becomes the buzziest of the year. As Ivy makes the leap into TV stardom, Theo's career nosedives after an unfortunate accident with a misjudged roofing feature. With nothing to do, he sets about building his dream home on a clifftop block Ivy has been able to buy. Ivy, meanwhile, becomes the family provider and outsider, forlorn when she sees how marginal her parenting role has become but too over-committed to do anything about it. Loading The script is the work of Australian writer Tony McNamara, who wrote The Favourite along with the television series The Great and Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos' wild follow-up to The Favourite, Poor Things. 'What Tony has done is take it somewhere else,' says Colman. 'There is more love in it.' The central relationship is full of wit, fun and warmth; when it morphs into hostility, the smart dialogue gives way to a crazed mayhem that could have been devised by Buster Keaton. 'When you're watching it, you're rooting for them,' she says. 'I think people are thinking 'ooh, I hope they get back together'. I hope they think that. Did you think that?' I did. Several sideways shifts help make that happen. Given the opportunity, McNamara will always steer towards the edge of absurdity. The initial meet-cute between Theo and Ivy, for example, turns into a burlesque romp when, about two minutes after meeting in the kitchen of a restaurant where he is trying to escape a boring dinner, they briskly agree to have sex in the fridge. It is clear, both to them and us, that this is the start of the rest of their lives. You gasp, then laugh, at the impossible speed of these proceedings. Not so impossible, says Colman. 'I fell in love with my husband the second I saw him. Proper thunderbolts,' she says. She met Ed Sinclair when she was 20 and they were in the same play; they have been together ever since. Cumberbatch is married to Sophie Hunter, a director and playwright. 'And I did with mine, but I took 17½ years to get round to doing something about it,' he says. 'Awwww,' sighs Colman, sentimentally. Wasn't that a long wait? 'I was a tongue-tied public schoolboy, I didn't know what that was. What they were. You know. What is a woman? But I figured it out and put it to her that we could be more than friends and there we are.' One specific twist, which slants the whole relationship between the Roses, is the fact of their Englishness. Theo and Ivy live in Northern California (actually filmed in Devon, England: it was cheaper and closer to home). Their snappy banter sets them apart from American friends like Amy (Kate McKinnon) who calls herself 'an empath' without irony. 'I thought that was a brilliant stroke, for us to remain English, like fish out of water,' says Colman. 'And I'm eternally grateful, because my American accent is not that good. You haven't heard it,' she adds, turning to Cumberbatch. 'It's awful.' Barbed badinage is not an exclusively English commodity, as Cumberbatch points out. 'Think of Howard Hawks films like His Girl Friday or the films of Billy Wilder. But we do get pigeonholed that way. The invective here is very sharp and cruel, but disguised with wit. In America you get the 'roast', which is just kind of 'f--- you, you're horrible, you motherf---er'. It's unbelievable what they throw at each other. But it's the same with us; we just think we get away with it by being clever around it.' Englishness is inherently amusing; Englishness is charming. So he has found, indeed, in real life. 'You're feted for your accent and you're like 'come on, really? It's just an accent, you know.' But you can get away with speeding tickets and all sorts by just saying 'Ew, I'm so sorry, I'm English!'. Go a big Hugh Grant and they're 'oh, OK, don't do it again'. Well, you know, I say 'they'. That one cop. Better not write that. Don't try this at home, English people!' Colman is giggling. 'I do find myself going over-English when I'm there,' she admits. Underlying the Roses' verbal thrust and parry, however, is a relationship unravelling largely because nobody pays attention to it. However bizarre the battle becomes, their complacency is immediately recognisable and relatable. They think they will be fine because they always are. 'In any long relationship, you need to work on it,' says Cumberbatch. 'They are faced with huge challenges, but they bring the same fun-loving, let's-give-it-a-go attitude to this huge shift in their dynamic. 'I think this schism, not talking, losing the dialogue between you so that you're not able to find the funny and the glue and the sex and the sorries and the I-hear-you-and-understand-you, is where the separation and resentment comes in.' All that talk about having it all, he adds with feeling: that's not possible. 'You can't have it all without a cost. And the cost is that you have to keep working at it, making decisions, investing in it. So you can have it all – a career, children, a love life, a partnership that lasts – but you have to accept the cost and find a balance within that.' What The Roses is not about, as they both stress with fervour, is a home being wrecked because a wife is earning more than her husband; clearly, they both think Theo and Ivy are better than that. 'It pains me to think that people are still saying 'oh, it all goes wrong when the woman is successful'. I sort of want to punch people in the nose when I hear that,' says Colman. 'It's about the couple having pressures on them as a couple.' The two actors swap examples of how their characters let each other down, then hasten to make allowances for each other. 'He weaponises knowing more about the kids than she does,' Colman observes. 'Oh, grossly!' agrees Cumberbatch at once. Colman wondered in their Vanity Fair interview if they 'mucked about too much' on set. 'Poor Jay was probably saying 'it's like herding cats'.' On the contrary, said Roach; their energy fed the mood. 'There is a little bit of a joyful keeping the ball in the air,' he said. 'They trust each other so much that they're willing to go a little off the script or a little into dangerous territory.' Which is not so surprising from Colman, who first came into modest prominence in sketch comedy on The Peep Show, then brought her unerring comic timing to the Lanthimos films. By contrast, there aren't a lot of laughs in Cumberbatch's CV, which I now find surprising. 'That's so true!' exclaims Colman. 'How does that happen?' Cumberbatch thanks her, looking slightly abashed. It's true, he says, that he has done almost no comedy on screen, not that he's done a musical or a horror, either. He hopes all these things will come to him. 'But I've done stuff which has a lot of funny in it. Sherlock and Dr Strange are the two obvious big ones but even something like [Alan] Turing [in The Imitation Game ]: there is humour scattered through everything I do that hopefully shows I can be funny.' And he has done comedies on stage, where an audience soon tells you whether you're funny or not. 'But that can be bad,' he says, as Colman nods vigorously. 'Because if you start chasing the laugh you got last night, it goes dead. And then you're thinking 'what went wrong?'' Over to Colman. 'And then you start over-egging it.' He picks up the thread again. 'Because with that fourth wall, you know what's there. And it's quite fun not knowing – or pretending not to know, because this script is laugh-out-loud. You'd have to be really bad not to make this funny.'
Extra.ie
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Fiddler on the roof at Horse Show
Visitors to the RDS have a musical surprise to look forward to on Friday with some of the cast of the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre's upcoming musical production 'Fiddler on the Roof' making a special appearance at the Dublin Horse Show. The Pop-up Fiddler experience is celebrating the return of one of the world's most beloved musicals, which is coming to Dublin's dockside in October, and tomorrow (Friday) guests to the RDS can enjoy an immersive experience inspired by the show's rich tradition and award-winning design by getting up close and personal with the show. Visitors to the Dublin Horse Show enjoying the Fiddler on the Roof experience There's also a chance for visitors to win tickets to the opening night of the show, which stars West End, TV and Film star, Matthew Woodyatt as Tevye and the productions iconic 'Fiddler' Roman Lytwyniw. Adding to the excitement, there will be a special live performance of ' If I Were A Rich Man' , on Friday, 8th August, from 12pm to 1pm, so visitors can catch a glimpse of West End brilliance on Irish soil, and a taste of what's to come at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre this October.
The Irish Sun
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
My husband's openly gay but we still have a great sex life – people are confused but it works & we're trying for a baby
HEADING off stage Samantha Greenstone beamed with delight. She'd just auditioned for a part in Fiddler on the Roof and it had gone excellently but if the directors had any doubts, she had already secured one fan. 6 Samantha and Jacob Greenstone are in a mixed orientation marriage Credit: Bauer 6 The pair say that they enjoy a healthy sex life together Credit: Bauer 6 While Jacob is attracted to men he says Samantha is his soulmate Credit: Bauer 'A fellow actor approached and told me that if I didn't get the part they were crazy,' Samantha, 38, recalls. 'He introduced himself as Jacob and we wished each other luck. ' Not long after Samantha received the news she was hoping for, she had secured the part and much to her delight so had Jacob. Read More on Relationships A month later they began 'A few days into rehearsals, we went out for drinks with another cast member,' Samantha says. 'While they headed off after a couple of rounds, Jacob and I kept chatting till 4am, and he ended up sleeping on my sofa. 'From then on, we hung out whenever we could, grabbing dinner or going to the gym. Most read in Fabulous 'Jacob told me he was But while Samantha was secure in their friendship it seems others were less so. I'm much taller than my 5ft husband - people think he's my son and say he's not a 'real man' but we have the best sex ever 'Friends would ask if we were dating,' Samantha says. 'I knew we had something special but I wasn't sure what. 'Jacob and I never wanted to be apart from each other, even sleeping in the same bed after nights out. 'And something between us just didn't feel like a normal friendship but I just assumed I must have misinterpreted things.' After 18 months as best pals Samantha visited an energy healer for advice on her relationship with Jacob. 'She told me the two of us shared a 'spiritual umbilical cord',' Samantha says. 'With that, everything clicked into place for me. 'I didn't want to live with the uncertainty any more, and I was sure that, come what may, our friendship was strong enough to survive.' 6 Samantha says that she has never felt more desirable than when she is with Jacob Credit: Bauer 6 Jacob says he is not bisexual and is only attracted to oher men Credit: Bauer Samantha plucked up the courage and sent Jacob a text asking whether he felt anything more than friendship for her. 'A few minutes later he replied telling me that of course he felt more than friendship and he was willing to see where this went,' Samantha says. 'I was as giddy as a teenager.' That weekend, Jacob and Samantha were both due to attend a friend's birthday party. 'When I saw him at the party, it wasn't awkward at all, and afterwards we headed back to my place,' she says. 'We were watching a film in bed, and he leant over and kissed me. 'It felt so natural and it made me wonder why we'd waited so long. 'We slept together that night and it was totally magical and romantic, like a Hollywood film.' From then on Jacob and Samantha were a couple. She says: 'None of our friends were surprised, and plenty of them asked what had taken us so long. 'I'd met his parents before, and when Jacob called his mum to tell her we were dating, she was so happy she cried.' The couple moved in immediately and began building their life together. 'Jacob was such a care-taker, always bringing me coffee or cooking us dinner,' Samantha says. 'But as the honeymoon period faded, we both began to worry whether the relationship would work long-term. We slept together that night and it was totally magical and romantic, like a Hollywood film Samantha Greenstone 'I worried I was trapping him or taking him away from a man but he always assured me he wasn't missing out. 'Yet he was still feeling anger and frustration from not having fully come out to his parents.' One afternoon when Samantha was visiting her family she had a call from Jacob. He explained that he had come out to his dad but was still in a relationship with Samantha. 'His dad was confused but accepting and Jacob said it was a huge relief,' she says. 'He explained that living a seemingly 'straight' life, without being fully open about his sexuality, had been driving him crazy.' From then on it was smoother sailing for the pair, who began seeing a couples' therapist together. Samantha says: 'To our surprise she told us she was also in a mixed-orientation relationship – she considered herself straight, but was married to a woman. 'It was a revelation to realise our situation wasn't totally unique. 'Jacob told me he wasn't bisexual and was solely attracted to men, and that's important to his identity. 'But he explained that I was his soulmate and that's its own star in another galaxy.' Relationships in numbers: The most common way to meet someone YouGov looked into how Brits find love, and your best bet is at work or through friends according to the data. Through work - 18% Through friends - 18% While out and about - 15% Other - 11% Online dating platform - 7% University or higher education - 6% Dating app - 6% School - 5% Shared hobby - 5% Family - 3% Face to face at an event - 0% While friends worried that her relationship might make her feel less physically desirable Samantha said it was quite the opposite. 'He doesn't just see me as body parts but as a whole,' she says. 'Jacob told me that he'd initially been concerned about whether the physical aspect of the relationship would work, but in the moment it had felt completely right.' After six years together, the couple went ring shopping. Then, just a few months later, Jacob proposed to Samantha on a red carpet outside the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel. 'Both of us had our own ideas for the wedding – from Jacob's Phantom of the Opera entrance music, to my Titanic-themed wedding cake,' she says. There were 35 guests in attendance, including both of their families. After the marriage ceremony, the couple posted a selection of photographs online. 'I'm marrying a gay man at the court house! I captioned it, cheekily,' Samantha says. My husband may be gay, but I'm 100 per cent sure he's the man for me Samantha Greenstone 'We were flooded with questions – with people even saying our relationship was a tax dodge. 'Loads of commenters wanted to know whether we slept together.' Samantha made a TikTok video in a bid to clear things up. 'We have a great sex life, and we have sex the traditional way,' she explained to her followers. 'If you need us to tell you about the birds and the bees, then that's not our problem.' "We don't have an open marriage either - we're 100% monogamous to each other." The couple received messages from others in mixed-orientation relationships too. 'It just shows it's more common than you'd think,' she says. 'Now we've been married for six months, and we're trying for a baby. 'My husband may be gay, but I'm 100 per cent sure he's the man for me.' 6 The husband and wife are now trying for a baby together Credit: Bauer
Yahoo
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Who Killed Jessie Blodgett? What to Know About Daniel Bartelt and Where He Is Now
Jessie Blodgett was found dead in bed in July 2013, and Daniel Bartelt mourned with her familyNEED TO KNOW Investigation Discovery's A Killer Among Friends recounts the true story of Jessie Blodgett's murder at the hands of Daniel Bartelt The 19-year-old theater student was found strangled in her bed in July 2013 Bartelt was arrested for Blodgett's death, and he was sentenced in August 2014Jessie Blodgett was an actress and musician whose life was cut short by Daniel Bartelt. A recent episode of Investigation Discovery's true crime series A Killer Among Friends recounted the 2013 murder of the 19-year-old Wisconsin theater student by her friend and former boyfriend, Bartelt. The incident stunned the town of Hartford, Wis., as Blodgett's friends and family tried to solve who killed her and why. "Prior to Jessie Blodgett's murder, we hadn't had a homicide in almost 30 years," Lt. James Zywicki, Hartford police investigator, said on A Killer Among Friends. The authorities were immediately on the case, and following a 16-day investigation, Bartelt was arrested and charged with the murder of his friend. Here's everything to know about Jessie Blodgett's murder, Daniel Bartelt's conviction and where he is now. Who was Jessie Blodgett? Blodgett was a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was studying theater. On July 14, 2013, Blodgett came home later from a cast party after a performance of Fiddler on the Roof, where she was playing the Fiddler. According to a police affidavit obtained by ABC News, Blodgett returned at 1 a.m., and her mom discovered her lifeless body in Blodgett's bed around 12 p.m. the next day. Investigators stated that there were signs of strangulation on her neck, but couldn't find a weapon in her room. Shortly after, the police got a search warrant to look through the teenager's phone records and Facebook account, on which she wrote about her play and posted a photo of herself with the rest of the cast. An autopsy later confirmed that Blodgett's cause of death was strangulation, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Who is Daniel Bartelt? Blodgett and Bartelt knew each other for several years, and according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, they had previously dated early on in high school. The former couple stayed friends and spoke regularly. "Jessie and Dan sit together at school; he was a straight-A student ... they would write songs together and sing together. He was welcome in our home," Jessie's father, Buck Blodgett, said in A Killer Among Friends. In a twist, after Blodgett was found dead in her bed, Bartelt showed his support to his family. "He was just over, the day after Jessie's murder, sharing hugs and memories and tears with us until his phone rang and he was called in for questioning," Buck explained. While there were unanswered questions about the tragedy, police were piecing together clues and instances related to Bartelt's activity outside of Blodgett's home. Days before her murder, he had attacked a woman in a nearby park on July 12. While the victim was out walking with her dog, Bartelt charged at her with a knife. She was able to wrestle the weapon away from Bartelt, and he drove off in his van. WISN 12 News reported that Bartelt was later questioned on July 16, and he admitted to attacking the woman. He was charged with four felonies and a misdemeanor. How did the police catch Daniel Bartelt? Authorities zeroed in on Bartelt as a suspect in Blodgett's killing when he mentioned an element of the crime that had not yet been made public. While being questioned by the police, Bartelt said someone had "raped and murdered" Jessie, but the rape detail was not known to those outside of the investigation, according to A Killer Among Friends. Police were able to obtain video footage of Bartelt walking through Woodlawn Park on the day of Blodgett's murder. They then searched the park's trash cans and found ropes, bloody sanitizing wipes and tape inside a discarded cereal box. Once tested, it was later confirmed that the evidence contained Blodgett and Bartelt's DNA. Per investigators also found "disturbing online search history" on Bartelt's computer, "including multiple queries about serial killers." Why did Daniel Bartelt kill Jessie Blodgett? Bartelt did not give an answer for why he killed Blodgett, and maintains his innocence. "I can't give you the reasons you are looking for. There's no hiding from yourself in a tiny, concrete cell," Bartelt told Blodgett's parents, per Milwaukee's Fox 6. "This jumpsuit that I'm wearing, these shackles don't make me guilty. I know there's evidence that I can't refute that would make you believe that I am guilty." Still, prosecutors stated during the trial that Bartelt likely targeted Blodgett because it was "convenient," according to ABC News reported that Blodgett's friends said Bartelt had tried to get back together with her, but she didn't feel the same way. What was Daniel Bartelt charged with? Bartelt was charged with one count of first-degree intentional homicide for Blodgett's death, per Milwaukee's Fox 6. He also faced a second count of first-degree intentional homicide, one count of first-degree recklessly endangering safety and one count of false imprisonment for the alleged attack against the woman with her dog. Where is Daniel Bartelt now? Bartelt was found guilty on Oct. 14, 2014, and was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He's currently imprisoned in the Wisconsin Waupun Correctional Institution and maintains he is innocent. "I find that the gravity of this offense, the premeditation, the brutality, is so overwhelming I think the Blodgetts are entitled to know that even after they're gone, there's no chance the defendant will ever walk the streets again and endanger someone else," judge Todd Martens said at the sentencing, per WISN 12 News. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Buck also told Bartelt he forgave him. "I not only forgive you, I love you," he said. "I didn't mean it like I like him, like I want to hang out and watch Packer games," Buck later explained. "But like a willful act of what I want to bring to this world, which is the opposite of what he brought in and took out of this world." Blodgett's legacy has lived on in the years since her death. In 2016, her father founded the Love Is Greater Than Hate Project in her honor. Buck said his daughter's "last big cause in life was male violence against women. She was just fiercely outspoken about that for a year or two before her death." Read the original article on People
