“Cross” creator Ben Watkins said the writers room was unwavering in their mission to ensure the role of Shannon Witmer (Eloisde Mumford) wasn’t merely a “damsel in distress” trope often seen in Hollywood films and TV series, adding that she was written to be more than just Ed Ramsey’s (Ryan Eggold) latest victim.
“We really made a concerted effort to do something that a lot of shows don’t do,” Watkins, who also serves as the showrunner and executive producer of “Cross,” told TheWrap. “They choose a target, it’s a woman, and then that woman is just a victim. And for us, we had to choose somebody and make them a real character, and her name was Shannon. Even though she was under duress, she never gave up. We gave her a backstory and gave her a whole life in the world and we were really proud that we were able to pull that off.”
Shannon is who Ed hopes will be the 12th and final addition to his series of killings, all of whom are mirrored after real-life murderers. After stalking Shannon, luring her into his home and drugging her, he confined Shannon inside a built-in torture chamber, where he quite literally chipped away at her appearance to craft her into one of his serial killer idols, Aileen Wuornos.
Watkins said there was a hefty amount of discussion and sensitivity around portraying Wuornos on screen.
“There were really a lot of conversations about, ‘Should we reflect any real life serial killers?’ In fact, the inspiration for ‘fanboy’ came from me being fascinated by this concept that people, like, idolize serial killers. And, ‘Do we want to do any of that, especially with real serial killers?” Watkins explained. “And then once we decided, I kind of felt like, ‘Well, that’s a fertile ground to go again. If you’re scared, that’s probably a good place to go.’ And so I went there, and then, what does that mean? Now, they’re paying homage to serial killers, and they want to transform people. You know, Aileen Wuornos is one that I think is a fascinating depiction, that’s a character study in and of itself. I also think she is one of the few women serial killers that has gotten that type of notoriety, and I really wanted to play into that as well. So, yeah, there were a lot of conversations about that.”
He continued, saying that after finalizing the decision to bring Wuornos’ image into frame, his next goal was to make sure the Shannon role didn’t exploit any cliche or stereotypical plot female characters have historically been placed in.
“One of the conversations that came up that was a byproduct that I did not anticipate: If you pick a woman serial killer as that, sort of the last version that Fanboy wants to transform, that means he has to target a woman,” Watkins said. “And now you’re going to do something that a lot of shows do, and you’re going to see a woman in jeopardy. And now, ‘How are we going to do that? How are we going to do that differently?’”
Watkins applauds the women in his writers room for speaking up whenever they may have felt a woman’s role needed more depth.
“I have to give a tip of the cap to the women that were in the writers room that every time it felt like we might shortchange, not just Shannon, but a lot of our women in the show that can happen at any given time,” Watkins said. “But they did not let that go, and they made sure that we had real, well-rounded characters.
All eight episodes of “Cross” Season 1 are now streaming on Prime Video.
