RedHanded - In Conversation with Ryan White: The Prank Show Murder of Kim Jong-nam

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

On the 13th of February 2017, the world witnessed the most high profile political assassination in decades when Kim Jong-nam was exposed to a deadly nerve agent known as VX in the centre of Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The two women who killed the exiled half-brother of Kim Jon-un, claimed they had been tricked and that they thought they were taking part in a Japanese YouTube prank show. We had the amazing opportunity to talk to Ryan White about the case and his new film Assassins, that follows the two legal teams who fought to save the two women (Siti Aisyah and Đoàn Thị Hươn) from Malaysia's mandatory death penalty for murder. The video version of this interview is available on Patreon for all $10+ Patrons and Assasins is out now on multiple platforms. For more information about our Patreon and to follow on social media please follow this link   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals.

They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. I'm Jake Warren. And in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him.

This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, guys. What is happening? Welcome to the very first installment of our 2021 interview series. This one we have spoken to Ryan White, producer and director of the documentary that's out now called Assassins. Assassins is all about the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, that is Kim Jong-un's older half-brother,

technically the heir to North Korea, if you want to to get into it which we do in this interview. It's done over a video call so it will sound a little bit different to usual red-handed but we had an amazing chat with Ryan. Definitely go and check out the documentary after you've finished listening to this. Hello everyone and welcome to one of our first proper interviews that we've recorded on our brand new software that we're using so hopefully we look a lot clearer than we usually do. For our first one we are delighted to welcome Ryan White, the director of the brand new documentary that is out called Assassins. Ryan, we've got a series of questions for you. But do you want to tell us a little bit about the documentary? Tell the audience just a quick elevator pitch. What's it about? Why should they go watch it?

Sure. So Assassins is about an assassination that happened in February of 2017. Kim Jong-nam, who is the older brother of Kim Jong-un, was assassinated in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. So it's all over CCTV camera. He's checking in for a flight at a kiosk and two women come up from separate directions behind him and they touch his eyes. And within an hour, Kim Jong-un has died. It turns out that what was on the women's hands was BX, which is the most lethal nerve agent in the world. And so the women's photos went all around the world immediately. One was wearing a sweatshirt that said LOL on it that became a very famous image and meme for sort of its femme fatale, diabolical

looking nature. But after the women were arrested, they went on trial in Malaysia for murder, which has a mandatory capital punishment, so death by hanging. And the women's defense was, yes, we assassinated Kim Jong-nam, but we thought we were on a reality show when we committed the assassination. We thought we were playing a prank. And in fact, we had been on a prank show for months leading up to this assassination, hired by Japanese YouTube producers, being paid for pranks, being flown all over Southeast Asia. And it turns out those Japanese YouTube producers were North Korean spies,

and our final prank was a political assassination. So that was sort of my entry point to this film. I followed it for two and a half years following their murder trial and investigating whether these women could be telling the truth, which seemed pretty inconceivable at the beginning. But that's what the film's about. And it traces the history of both women that led them up to this moment where they touch Kim Jong-nam's face. It is such an unbelievable story, but also so totally believable because Japanese YouTube prank shows are everywhere. They absolutely exist. So what I loved about the film was throughout the whole thing, you're sort of flipping and flopping between each side of the story because both are completely conceivable. And I think you captured that like that question really fantastically.

I was completely gripped by it. I really was. So congratulations, first off. Thank you. It's exactly the kind of story that our audience completely love. And if you guys can go check out Assassins. It's out everywhere now. I think we watched it on Amazon Prime, but you can watch it on YouTube, you can watch it on Google Play, you can watch it on Amazon Prime. So go check it out. It's out now. So with that, let's jump into our very insightful questions that we've put together for Ryan. Ryan, obviously, when this happened, it was in 2017. And, you know, it's not unfair to say that during that time, as probably is now the case as well, Trump was doing a lot of headline

stealing, especially over here in the West. And it definitely felt like a lot of Westerners, even our own audience who we've been talking about this case with, maybe didn't know exactly what really happened here due to all of the other distractions that were out there at the time. Did it feel daunting for you as a filmmaker, knowing that this documentary that you were going to be putting together might be the first time or the first chance that both Siti and Arne had to tell their stories in full, especially to a Western audience? I wouldn't use the word daunting. I would use the word exciting, actually, as a documentary filmmaker, when you can... I knew this just from my own small sample size around me

when I started making this film, because I was the same way. You know, the assassination happened February of 2017. Trump had just taken office. So at least in the US, it was a huge headline the day it happened. You know, the woman in the LOL sweatshirt, Kim Jong-un's brother being

assassinated, but it disappeared very fast here. And then we saw that happen over the next four years, that any international story that under the Obama years would have been a massive story just dissipated very quickly because Trump was dominating everything. And so I wasn't any different than that. I had no idea what the truth was in this story. I had no idea what happened to the women. I just assumed they were part of the North Korean regime and or paid assassins, which I think most of the world assumed. And so the documentary kind of came to me. I didn't seek it out. A journalist who was writing an article, a deep dive investigative look, it was published in GQ magazine. It's a great article. I recommend your listeners read it. It was the first real article that blew this up and put forward the premise that the women were going to be using a reality show defense, but the trial hadn't started. And so that journalist, Doug Clark, approached me and said, I'm writing this article. There's way more to this story than what hit the headlines. It's going to sound crazy, but just hear me out." And so I heard him out on the phone,

and I'm very impulsive for my personal life and my career life. And so a few weeks later, I was on a flight to Malaysia with Doug to explore. And when I was on the ground and starting to meeting Doug's sources and meeting the lawyers, we also met Siti's family on that first trip, we went to Indonesia. I thought, even if these women are lying, this is a great hook for a documentary. I've made many documentaries. I've made a few true crime ones. So I think I have a pretty good sense now, at least for my personal taste, what draws me to these types of stories. And this was the type that drew me in. And the small sample size of the people that I was saying it to friends and family because this film was quite secret for the years that we were making it for safety

purposes but the people that I was talking to about it they were the exact same they had no idea they would kind of say like everyone had some crazy memory of it in fact like none of them were accurate it would be like hey was that the woman with the poisonous lipstick? Or were those the women who shot Kim Jong-un with darts? And it's like, no one had an accurate memory of what happened. And this is like one of the biggest political assassinations of our lifetime. And yet no one even knew the basics. So it was daunting in some ways. And it became more daunting, which we can get to later. The more I started to make the film and realized they might be innocent, then I felt a much more extreme responsibility. But at the beginning, it was very exciting because it was like, you know, so much of true crime, which I know you guys are aware of, is sort of like small town stories that you've never heard

of, especially in the US. Like, people love that. And I've made that before. But no one's ever heard of that crime or that murder. This was probably one of the biggest murders of our lifetimes. And yet people still didn't know the answer. So that is very exciting as a documentary filmmaker that you can make a story that has real suspense and real answers to people. But it's true crime on the most massive geopolitical scale. I thought the suspense in the film was so beautifully done, even the tiny details of like when you've got the texts from different people and you've got the three dots. And I thought that was such an amazing way of doing it because everyone has that anticipation feeling when you see that someone is typing. And it was such a nice way

of incorporating that. Just to pick up on what you said about safety, you not only directed the film, you produced it, you multi-talented individual. How did you get hold of people like John the Taxi Driver, who's essentially a North Korean informant? What is that process when you're on the ground? Well, so I was working with Doug Clark, that journalist, at the beginning. And so his article focused heavily on Siti Aisha, the Indonesian woman. In fact, Doug's article didn't focus at all on Duan's recruitment. That we had to investigate completely for the film. But Siti, he had done a lot of legwork by the time I went to Malaysia. And so if you read his article, it's not John the taxi driver that's in the article. It's another taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur who supposedly was the person, the civilian who connected Siti Aisha, a sex worker, to the North Korean spies who were claiming to be Japanese. So his testimony plays a critical role in whether you believe that she signed up for this unknowingly. and they pulled up to a, Kuala Lumpur has a lot of expats in it, a lot of British expats. And there's a club called the Beach Club

where a lot of men go to find sex workers. And we filmed undercover there a lot. And so Siti's story is that she was at that club and she had left and she was waiting outside for a taxi. And John pulled up and said, hey, these Japanese guys were in my taxi earlier and they're looking for an actress in a prank show. And that's it. He said, yeah, I'm interested. And then John ended up connecting her.

And then, you know, it all went downhill from there, so to speak. So John was key to finding him, because if he was telling the truth and he was a real person, then he was proof that she was naive at the beginning, at least. And John was, I mean, I had never, North Korea is not my beat. This is the first time I've told a story about such a nefarious regime. Doug, the journalist I'm working with, that is his beat. He's been covering it for years. And so John was a crazy story because Doug had such great investigative tactics that he got John at least to meet us. So this all felt very scary. It felt like I was living in a spy movie for years. And meeting John happened at 2am at a mall in Kuala Lumpur. So the malls are closed, obviously, but they have these

open air food courts that are still open throughout the night. So they have this very creepy feel because it's like these bright luxury malls, you know, where you can see into the stores, but they're closed. And you're in these corridors that are these open food courts where like a couple coffee shops might be open in the middle of the night. And our plan was to meet John at a coffee shop there. So Doug and I were waiting at the coffee shop and no one else is in it, minus the lady that's working there. And a man shows up at the doorway. He has a hat on. He has a towel over his face, which is totally normal now in the year of Corona, but looked very strange at the time where we could only see his eyes. And the guy looked at us and then he just started sprinting out of the mall. And Doug, the journalist that I'm with,

who had been covering this for a year, started chasing him. So I'm sitting at the coffee shop, like with holding my camera, and Doug just is like, hold on one second and disappears. And then Doug's gone for, I don't know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. So I'm just sitting there texting Doug, are you okay? Where did you go? Was that John? Where are you? And he's not texting me back. And then 45 minutes later, Doug comes back into the coffee shop with John and he had chased John all the way back to his taxi. John had tried to drive away and Doug jumped in the front seat with him and essentially talked him down, like talked him off the ledge and calmed him down. This was one of my first experiences with this, but I saw it time and time again that people were spooked and understandably. I mean, John, if you believe John, and John, I think, is in a murky,

a murky ethical or murky gray area in our film on how much he knew and how much he didn't know or how much money he was making off of this or how much he wasn't. But he was a Malaysian civilian. He is not a North Korean spy. And so for someone like that to start taking part in a film, it's one thing, you know, maybe have to have given Doug an off the record comment for an article that doesn't have your face on it. But then to suddenly have a documentary crew in your taxi with you while you're telling the story, I think is far more daunting because the North Korean regime is scary, you know, and this was the ultimate example of that. They proved with the assassination of Kim Jong Nam that they could be very, very punitive and

do it in the most public of ways. And so that example of John, you know, running away from us, I started seeing time and time again through the next two years where people would think they wanted to take part and then they would get spooked, you know, and it's all a testament to Doug that we even got John to participate because I sure as hell did not chase John down. You know, I stayed safely in the coffee shop, you know, sipping my cappuccino or whatever. Well, who can blame you? It sounds very much like the suspense and the danger that comes across in the film was as much a part of the behind the scenes filming as it is in front of the camera. And actually, that brings us to one of the main questions that Hannah and I wanted to talk to you about, Ryan, was this idea that you worked in true crime before, like you said, and you actually made the Netflix series The Keepers as well. We saw that following on from that documentary, there were some unhappy people, particularly the Archdiocese of Baltimore,

who seems to have spent quite a bit of time and Twitter energy and money trying to discredit you and your work. That's one thing. But getting involved with, as you put it, a nefarious regime like North Korea, who don't take criticism particularly well, were you worried at all about some kind of VX-style backlash headed in your direction when you were filming this? I mean, I was always nervous making a film. I will say, like, I'm fairly cavalier when I'm making a film.

Like, I'm far braver as a filmmaker than I am as your average person. So I don't when I'm when I'm holding a camera, or I'm, you know, like a dog with a bone with some sort of story about justice, most all of my true crime stories have been about justice and systemic corruption in some sort of way, or the lack of accountability, I get very rabid in the sense that I won't I won't stop. But yes, I mean, throughout making this film, I will say my mom was my mom was the basket case because we I just finished The Keepers. And yeah, we had taken on the Catholic Church and the Baltimore Police Department, which both have, you know, a lot of darkness around them. And she was like, seriously, like like you're doubling down.

We just got out of that. We just like, it had just ended. All of the backlash, all of the sort of weirdness that came out of the keepers had just started sort of tapering. And then she's like, you're gonna take on the North Korean regime. Why, why are you doing this?

And so she was the one that was more nervous than anyone. But I will say, like, our physical safety was a concern throughout making the film. And I don't know, it's interesting because I lived within this for two years, and I made it to the finish line. So looking back, it's hard to put myself in those shoes of beginning the film. And you never know what's a legitimate concern and what sort of paranoia because so much of this story is about being followed and spies. It's an espionage story and poison. And so all of those types of things are things out of, you know, Hollywood. They're things

out of Bond films and Jason Bourne films. And so when you're living in that type of plot, I think you can become fairly paranoid about what's happening to you. And I will say a lot of I think a lot of that paranoia was valid. I mean, we experienced that firsthand in Hollywood with the Sony hack that happened out of that film, the interview that James Franco, Seth Rogen film. And so we were taking our film out to Hollywood to the distributors in the wake of that. And so we had a lot of concern from distributors about taking on our film. And we had a lot of consulting, like we had to meet with the FBI that handled the Sony hack to consult on our film on how to do it safely and how to protect our physical safety and cybersecurity. So it wasn't like we did it naively. I might be quite naive as a documentary filmmaker, a little reckless, but I have a great team around me that's always saying like,

Ryan, scale it back a little bit, or let's do this safely, or let's go in and meet with the FBI. And so we did have to take a lot of precaution while we were making it. So it's easy to look back, now the film's out. And then there was the year of coronavirus was in between, which created another total distance from the story itself or the fear around the story. But I have to remind myself how afraid we were for a lot of making this film. And it was scary. As an espionage film, it is quite exciting.

But I think it's very human as well like I really felt for Siti and Duan how did you cope with toing and froing to Malaysia and America and then knowing that they were on death row like as you were making the film not knowing what was going to happen to you that must have been quite stressful what happened to them sorry yeah I mean I don't ever I don't ever take on i get pitched a lot of true crime because the keepers was so popular and it was the very beginning of that kind of boom you know the keepers was netflix's follow-up to making a murderer and it was extremely popular like probably i think that was lightning in a bottle i don't think i will ever be able to recreate that

in my career because it was just a moment in time where the world was captive, and there was very little content out there. Now there's such a proliferation of content, even the most popular of documentary series don't get the eyeballs that they used to. And so after The Keepers, we were pitched everything. And my producing partner's name is Jess Hargrave. We've been best friends since we were little kids. We have our company together. So we have very similar sensibilities. And we said no to almost everything. We're not interested in true crime as a genre, as filmmakers.

Like, I find it very interesting to watch. But as filmmakers, it's not the type of story that we seek out, purely based on the genre. But if there are the elements that I'm drawn to as a filmmaker at the center of a crime story, then I would reenter that world is what I always said. And Assassins became that. So I never saw this as a true crime film as much as I saw it as a character film, which is how I see everything that I work on. Like I'm drawn to following a person or a group of people's journey while it's unfolding. Like I don't like looking back on the past. I don't make historical films. Well, I've done a couple, but I didn't really enjoy them. I like being there with my camera while something is unfolding while someone is going

through something. So The Keepers, even though it was a murder that happened in 1969, there was this modern day movement happening, you know, of all these grandmas trying to seek justice for their teacher. I loved being in the mix of that, of following all these women in their 60s, finally, you know, retired women saying enough is enough and investigating this murder. And so my draw to this film was not the assassination of Kim Jong Nam and the sort of sexy tagline and the LOL sweatshirt of Pham Phae Thao, my draw was, oh my god, there's about to be a murder trial. Women, I can follow a murder trial, which has a very built in arc as a documentary filmmaker, like that has a beginning, middle and end. And there are fascinating mystery

women at the center of this that will be my main characters, You know, are they trained assassins? Or are they innocent pawns of the North Korean regime is sort of the setup of the film. And it allowed me to do a deep dive into the life of two women that were total mysteries and written off as guilty to the rest of the world. And so that was my real draw. And I think if people watch assassins, hopefully that's what they see. You know, the story is very bizarre and absurd, definitely has those tabloid elements. But I would say the film is very grounded in the story of the two women. And we were constantly reminding ourselves, like, don't get lost in the headlines, don't get lost in the sexy appeal of all of these elements of this crime that are very interesting. And we go into all of them in the film, but we were constantly making ourselves, reminding

ourselves that our guiding star was the question, like, who are these women and what led them to this moment? And if we can answer that question for the audience by the end, then they can decide, you know, why, why this crime happened or whether these women were involved knowingly. And actually, you know, Ryan, you said that it's the kind of story that you started off thinking one way, halfway through you're thinking another way, by the end of it, you're thinking a completely different way. How did you start off? Did you start off feeling like this feels completely inconceivable? Of course, they're part of the regime. And what was the turning point for you to moving towards believing the claims of the women? And did you ultimately? How did you feel about it? dubious about untruths. And so, you know, like I said earlier, I thought this is a good film,

regardless of whether the women are telling the truth, even if they are lying, and they are part of the North Korean regime. That is fascinating, right? You know, if they go on murder trial, and it's proved that they were part of the North Korean regime, why were these two women willing to give up their lives for the North Korean regime? That's a great film. So I wasn't really concerned about their guilt or innocence at the beginning. You know, I was working with Doug, the journalist, and his article definitely posits the theory that they might be innocent, because he had found the people that connected Siti to the North Koreans. And those people seem to be saying she didn't know who they were. We watched her get groomed. She really thought she was on a reality show. But that wasn't proof. That was a couple

people's testimony saying she was naive. What happened during the course of making the film, especially as we got access to their lawyers. So if people watch the film, a lot of the film is following both defense teams, because the women had two separate legal teams that were defending their lives, you know, that were fighting for their lives. And the more we gain the trust of the lawyers, because this took place over two years, it's not like, you know, that were fighting for their lives. And the more we gain the trust of the lawyers, because this took place over two years, it's not like, you know, I went in on my first trip and lawyer said, like, come on in. Here's all our files. Let us show it to you. You want to see Siti's text messages with the North Koreans? Here they are.

Like that didn't happen in year one. This is what I love about documentary filmmaking. It's a real it's a real slow burn And it's a really long game in building trust. And so over the course of two years, spending so much time with those lawyers, because they didn't really understand what we were doing. It's not like the documentary format is popular in Malaysia. So even though these were very high level attorneys, and very sophisticated people, they were still kind of confused about who we were, because they were used to the press, but they weren't used to a long

form documentary. So they would kind of, you know, like Mr. Gooey, who was City's lawyer would sit down with me in his office and give me, you know, a 30 minute interview. And then he'd kind of be like, Okay, you leave now. And I and I would be like, Oh, no, no. Is it cool if I just stay here all day long? And he was like, What? What are you talking about? What are you doing? And I'd be like, Oh, is it okay if I just like go in with your secretary and film with her a little bit? And he's kind of like, my secretary? Why? So they just didn't totally get it at the beginning. And I don't even think they totally got it until they just saw the film recently. We started to become a part of a team, which is what always sort of happens if we're doing our job correctly. And so over the course of those two years, we were just a part of the fabric of their

offices. We were in there so much that they kind of like, were like, oh, these guys just aren't leaving. They're always here. They're always knocking on the door and just coming in with their bags and sitting down. And so we built relationships with them. We built friendships with them. We built trusting working relationships with them. And so I don't want to spoil the film for your listeners because I think there is so much suspense and I hope people won't Google what happened in the courtroom or the truth. But the more the trial went on, I can say without spoiling it, the more likely it looked that the women were going to be executed.

Like all signs pointed towards their execution, towards their conviction and then their execution. So the lawyers, I think, started to realize that it was desperate measures, that their clients were going to be hanged. The truth was not coming out in the courtroom. This is a whole part of our film. The Malaysian case against the women was so one-sided. They were out to convict the women from the beginning and they were out to ignore the North Korean role in the assassination from the very beginning of the trial. So the lawyers started to give us more and more evidence because the truth wasn't coming out in the courtroom. I think they recognized, wow, this is not going to come out in trial, meaning the truth. And therefore, what do we have to lose to hand

this over to a documentary film crew who might be able to get the truth out in that way? We were prepared to release the film the moment the women were convicted because everyone thought they were going to be convicted. So we were editing at a turbo speed to have the film ready to go and just put in an ending, which would be the conviction, and then put it out into the world. Even if that meant we had to bypass distribution or going into theaters, which was a thing a year ago, we were ready to put it out. And that's not what ended up happening. So the more the lawyers started handing that stuff over to us, and by stuff, I mean, well, there's a lot of stuff, but the two major things in our film

that started opening my eyes to the idea that they might be innocent. One is the CCTV footage of the airport, which no one had that at the beginning. There were like the images of Duan in the LOL sweatshirt that went viral, but no one had the full catalog of how the day went down. We finally got our hands on that through, I can't say how, but we finally got our hands on that at some point about a year into making the film, which was thousands of hours of footage from the airport that day. And then we started, we spent months, my editing team spent months piecing together that footage because there was no guidebook of like, this is, you know, like, this is how this day went down. We had to literally just watch thousands of hours of

footage finding the same six people, four North Korean spies, two female assassins throughout the day. Once we piece that all together, it was like, holy shit, this totally corroborates what the women are saying. The story they've been telling for two years is corroborated by watching how the footage goes down from the minute they arrive to the minute they leave. So the CCTV footage was one thing. The other thing was the entire digital imprint of the women. So these women were spinning a narrative like, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't even know these men were North Korean. We had been on a prank show for months. It's one thing for lawyers to be telling you that that's their story. It's another thing for the lawyers to say, all right, here are all the boxes of all of their text

messages that have been excavated over the last few years. Nothing is taken out. You can see that. You'll see every day of every year since 2014, flip through them. And then when you start getting to watch how they're communicating with the North Koreans, then you're watching their social media profiles, how that matches up with their flight paths around where they supposedly said they played pranks in the lead up. Then you're able to go to, say, an airport in Phnom Penh, get the CCTV footage from a day Siti says she was playing a prank there. Then you actually see Siti playing the same exact prank that she played against Kim Jong-nam,

running up behind some random man in the airport, touching his eyes. But the man laughs and he doesn't die and he moves on. So we started to be able to compile all of this evidence that corroborated the women and nothing, not one shred of evidence, and this didn't come out in the courtroom or my investigation, that showed that they knew what they were doing. Like nothing even suspicious in a text message or social media post that would alert you to the idea like, oh, we might know who these men are, you know, to the point where they're communicating with their friends saying, you know, oh, you know, Siti actually called James, the North Korean spy. She called him Japan.

That was his name in her phone. And so she would be texting with her friend saying, oh, Mr. Japan is picking me up this morning to go play this prank. And so the longer we made it, the more we accumulated that evidence and nothing pointed towards their guilt. I mean, that's just the million dollar question, isn't it?

It is so incredibly well done. And you can tell, obviously, you spent two years making the film. But every step of the way, it's backed up with something else and something else and something else. And it builds this like pyramid of evidence, which is just fantastically done. And on that note, what is next? You've taken on the Catholic Church and North Korea. Who is next? I never know on the Catholic Church and North Korea. Who is next? I never know what I'm allowed to talk about.

I don't want to get you in trouble. Yeah, no, I have a lot. I have like four or five new films. But then, you know, I always have to, yeah, I don't want to get sued by any of the distributors. Because so many of these films, especially the investigative ones, we deliberately keep secret, right? Like we weren't talking about assassins publicly at all while we were making it. Same with The Keepers. For safety reasons and for storytelling reasons, like you don't want to tip off certain institutions or certain individuals even that you're making a film. So you don't want like Netflix announcing The Keepers a year before

it comes out and then everyone can prepare their defenses, you know? So I have a few more investigative ones. I'm doing one with Netflix right now. It's very similar in the sense that I think on its base, it looks like a true crime film. I would argue that it's not true crime. There's a lot of layers around it. But there is like a murder trial at the center of it, as opposed to murder. It's around a woman again. So almost all my stories have been about women victims or often, I mean, The Keepers, Assassins, and this new one I'm making are all about women who were accused of something, but might actually be victims. So there must be something about that that draws me

to it, that sort of wondering whether someone could have been involved in something but sort of the slow reveal that they were innocent all along and in fact they were victims in that way so i have a new one doing that i'm making my very first film about a man i can say that i've made 10 films now they've all been focused on women i like to vacillate between i call it career add because i get to make a few things at the same time and they take years to make, you know, the shortest documentary takes two years. So I get to really like, because I have such a great team around me kind of holding down the fort in Los Angeles and making sure all the films are getting edited, and you know, that the nuts and bolts are coming together. I'm out there in the world filming multiple stories at the same

time. So I like to jump around between, you know, I'll be working on something very dark, like assassins, very adrenaline pumping, very dangerous. At the same time, I'm working on something that's much more fun, fun for me as a curious individual. So, you know, I made a film about Serena Williams. I love tennis. I love Serena. I got to be on tour with her for a year at the same time I was making The Keeper. So it would allow me to jump from this very dark world of murder and sex abuse and then fly to the Australian Open and watch Serena try to win the trophy. And so my film about a man, which I can't say who he is, but he's in the world of design, is much more artistically and intellectually stimulating for me as someone who's interested

in design. And of course, he has a great life story. I'm never interested in like, you know, like Serena, like, I'm not interested in telling a story just about like, the best tennis player, because she's great at tennis. Like, I'm always interested in the layers outside of that. And this man has a great life story like Serena does, that sort of is the foundation of why he's so great at what he does. Amazing. Thank you so much, Ryan. I think everything you've said there, whether you're drawn to true crime or not, the fact that you focus on whether these people are really victims, the majority of your cases being women, and your curious mind are a perfect fit

for our audience. So everybody listening, watching, go check out Assassins. It's out now. We'll leave a bunch of links below where you can don't google it but don't google it don't spoil the suspense because it is well worth going into it with probably the lack of knowledge you have on that case like hannah and i did so definitely go check that out and it was actually a perfect fit with the episode that we released this week which was on the murder of journalist jamal Khashoggi. So a really good fit and a great time to have you on, Ryan. And Ryan, whatever you do, wherever your documentary filmmaking takes you,

please come back to Red Handed another time and tell us about your next big adventure, whenever that happens. Happily. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming. We'll see you guys next week. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness.

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