Diksha Sundriyal
In Hulu’s ‘Under the Bridge,’ a woman returns home after ten years, only to discover that the shadow of a brutal murder has been cast over the town. The story unfolds from several perspectives, one of which is Rebecca Godfrey’s. She comes back to Saanich after around a decade, researching for a new book she is supposed to write. Within a few days, she discovers that a 14-year-old girl’s murder has caused a stir in the town, and as the investigation proceeds, she becomes deeply involved in it herself.
One of the things that pulls Rebecca towards the case is the teenage girls involved in it and the nature of the tragedy. She relates it to her own life, especially her brother Gabe’s death. When asked about it, she prefers not to talk about it.
Rebecca Godfrey’s Brother Died Tragically Young
‘Under the Bridge’ adapts Rebecca Godfrey’s nonfiction book of the same name, whose slightly fictionalized version is played by Riley Keough in the Hulu series. In the book, Godfrey intentionally removed herself from the equation, refusing to write from a first-person perspective because she didn’t want to inflict her own experiences onto the story. The show diverts from that narrative choice and puts Rebecca front and center while also turning the focus on all the things that haunted her, particularly her brother’s death.
Named Gabe in the TV show, Godfrey’s brother, Jonathan, was sixteen years old at the time of his death. Born to William and Ellen Godfrey in 1965 in Chicago, Jonathan died on August 10, 1981, in an accident in which he fell down a coastal bluff from a height of 23 meters and drowned. He is laid to rest at Royal Oak Burial Park Cemetery. His sister was thirteen years old at the time, and his death had a significant impact on her psyche and, years later, on her approach to writing the story about Reena Virk’s death.
Jonathan’s body was found in the water in his hometown of Saanich, and hearing a similar thing about Reena Virk stirred strong emotions in Rebecca. There is one particular incident that stuck with her. It was when a reporter came knocking at their door and asked her if she knew “the boy that died.” It seemed very crude of the reporter to ask her that question in that manner. So, when Rebecca decided to interview the people connected to Reena Virk and the people accused of her death, she decided not to take that crude approach. She didn’t intend to come across as “intrusive or voyeuristic” and opted to be “quite tentative by journalistic standards.”
Working on Virk’s story was emotionally jarring for the author, and she would often find herself “pulling over to the side of the road with panic attacks while on the way to interview people.” It wasn’t just Virk’s death and its connection to the water that haunted her; it also brought back memories of the path she’d taken in the aftermath of Jonathan’s death. The grief of losing her brother had weighed heavy on her, and it turned her towards the punk scene, acting all tough to appear intimidating while hiding “behind the mask of anger and coolness.” She found this reflected in the Shoreline Six, especially Nicole Cook (Josephine Bell in the show and the book). All of this made her emotional connection to the case stronger than she’d anticipated.
In the show, Rebecca’s brother’s death becomes an important plot point for her story. It is revealed to have been one of the pivotal events in her life, and while she doesn’t like to talk about it, it does influence the way she approaches Josephine, the other girls, and their families.
Read More: Is Lily Gladstone’s Cam Bentland Based on a Real Police Officer?
