Colin Firth 'The Staircase' Performance Has Fans Sounding Off

By Daniel S. Levine

Colin Firth's performance in The Staircase is earning praise from critics and HBO Max viewers. The Oscar-winner plays author Michael Peterson in the limited series, which debuted on HBO Max with three episodes on May 5. Peterson was convicted of murder in the death of his second wife, Kathleen Peterson, but a judge later reduced the charge to voluntary manslaughter.

The Staircase was written by Antonio Campos (The Devil All the Time) and is inspired by the documentary series of the same name about Peterson's trial. Toni Collette co-stars as Kathleen, while Michael Stuhlbarg plays Peterson's lawyer David Rudolf. Dane DeHaan, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sophie Turner, and Odessa Young play Peterson's children, and Olivia DeJonge plays Kathleen's daughter. Rosemarie DeWitt, Tim Guinee, Parker Posey, Juliette Binoche, and Vincent Vermignon also star in the eight-episode series.

Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in December 2001. In 2003, Peterson was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Eight years after the first trial, he was granted a second trial after a judge ruled a prosecution witness gave misleading testimony. In 2017, Peterson agreed to plead guilty without admitting guilt to voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to 86 months in prison, but since he already served over 98 months, he was released. In 2019, he published the memoir Behind the Staircase to tell his side of the story. Scroll on to see how fans responded to Firth's performance as Peterson.

'Colin Firth does a dead nuts impression of Michael Peterson'

Although Firth has played his share of real people during his career, the actor told E! News it was not easy to play Peterson and recreate his accent. "It wasn't so much, can I imitate him?" The King's Speech star said. "It was whether the cadences, the sounds, the vocal foibles, and all these nuances could tell me something... I found it rather unfathomable."

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'Colin Firth is just an amazing actor'

Even after doing his research and watching documentaries, Firth found Peterson to be a mysterious person. "I realized that I didn't want to depend on how I sounded, you know?" he told E! News. "I had to be freer than that, so very early on I said, 'Forget the voice, just deal with these extraordinary actors."

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'Whew! The brilliance!'

Although HBO Max is home to the new dramatization of Peterson's story, viewers have to turn to Netflix to watch the original The Staircase series by French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. The series ran eight episodes, but two more were produced in 2013 and another three were made in 2018 to provide updates on the case. All 13 episodes are available to stream on Netflix.

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'This is such a magnificent performance'

"Trying to watch The Staircase on [HBO Max], but my brain is absolutely refusing to process Colin Firth with an American accent," one fan wrote.

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'Not anywhere close to capturing Michael Peterson's abject weirdness'

"I started watching HBO's The Staircase, and I love Colin Firth, but he does not come anywhere close to capturing Michael Peterson's abject weirdness," one critic of the series wrote. "And it's precisely Peterson's abject weirdness that makes the case so fascinating."

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'He's playing it wayyy too toned down'

"This is now an HBO's The Staircase fan account. Colin Firth was poor casting IMHO, he's playing it wayyy too toned down. Michael Peterson is such a bizarre dude, we need a Willem Dafoe-level unhinged performance," one viewer wrote.

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