When They See Us: behind the harrowing Netflix drama about the Central Park Five
The cast of Ava DuVernay’s devastating fact-based drama talk about the story’s prescience and their memories of the original case
From the 39th floor of the Mandarin Oriental in New York, Central Park’s spring blossom takes centre stage in a sweeping Manhattan panorama. But even from this high up, it’s impossible to see the park’s entire expanse, from its southern base among midtown’s designer boutiques and luxury penthouses to the public housing blocks and low income neighbourhood of East Harlem on its northern tip two and half miles away.
It was in the park’s distant northern sector, 30 years ago, that an episode of horrific violence now woven into the city’s history of racial injustice took place. And it is that incident that brings some of America’s finest television actors and brightest young prospects to this opulent hotel, with its jarringly obscured view, today.