Compiled Transcripts #2
Kent Romero: No. Well, not at that point.
She was talking to me. And then she ran into the road to flag a taxi and that was that.
I went back to the party. And of course Bobby demanded to know what I’d done with Lillian, but I blithely ignored him, went straight to Gina, told her everything Lillian had said.
Gina Ross: As soon as Kent said those words, I knew. “Nowhere.” The bridge, our bridge.
Kent Romero: Gina starts going on about the Williamsburg Bridge, trying to rally a search party, but…
God help me, I thought she was being irrational.
I tried to calm her down. Not sure whether I was being a sexist prick, Madeline, accusing my female friend of hysteria, or just trying to assure myself that everything was going to be okay when I felt in my gut it wasn’t.
Meanwhile, Bobby—who, by the way, had been lurking, little güevón, listening to every word coming out of Gina’s mouth—gives this grandiose speech thanking everyone, apologizing for needing to leave the party so early, so by the time Bobby was out the door, Gina had lost the attention of her potential posse, scant as it was.
She wound up bolting downtown on her own. I didn’t go with her. I have no idea what happened after that.
Aaron Adler: It’s always been fairly clear to me what happened from that point.
Lillian Martin was a queen when it came to comedy, lightness and laughter incarnate on the stage, but there had always been a current of darkness running through her in the day-to-day.
Anyone who spent real time with her could sense that.
And unfortunately, that night, it overwhelmed her.
Sam Petrosian: I wish she’d stayed at the party.
Or gone home with Bobby. Or let Kent leave with her that night, wherever she was heading, even just to walk the bridge.
He’s a big guy, you know. Odds would have been a lot slimmer that any mugger would have approached the two of them together.
But maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe they’d both be dead if that had happened.
Madeline: You’re certain it was a mugging, then.
Sam Petrosian: The person they pegged at first?
No. We know it wasn’t him. But a robbery gone wrong, at that time of night, in that part of town?
It’s not unlikely. There wasn’t any cash left in her wallet that was found.
And I can’t believe it was something intentional on her part.
She was life to me. She was the one who would come to the rest of us and calmly remind us that there was always a solution, that everything was temporary.
To get over ourselves, in other words! She wouldn’t.
I know that’s the common narrative now, but I simply cannot go there, not knowing her like I did.
Stevie Doyle: As I said, I was shitfaced. Sally finally put me out of my misery, dragged me back to her place that night to sleep it off. Everything else I know is pieced together from news reports.
Madeline: Sally really did hold down the fort, didn’t she?
Stevie Doyle: Well, she’d clock out from time to time.
She went out again that night, actually—I heard her front door shut at some point, before I woke up the next afternoon on her sofa with a raging hangover and made my way home.
We all had the next week off. Nothing seemed wrong until the following Monday morning, when Lillian doesn’t turn up.
Aaron comes in, grave as an undertaker, says Gina called the police and Bobby’s confirmed that… yeah. Lillian’s missing.
So we get on with the show, but in the background, we’re trying to figure it all out ourselves, like we’re detectives.
Like you’re doing now. We know Lillian headed toward the Williamsburg Bridge because we have eyewitnesses who saw her all along that route.
Nobody on the bridge, though. Nobody witnessed her jump.
Madeline: That’s what you think happened?
Stevie Doyle: At the time? No, of course not.
We thought she’d gotten jumped. They’d arrested some poor schmuck, but he was cleared within days.
She’d left her bag behind in a snowdrift in some park downtown and he found it.
He didn’t kill her; he had an alibi. And who mugs somebody, murders them, tosses the body in the water, and then leaves the bag behind on dry land for somebody else to find?
So what alternatives are left, given that they found her at the bottom of the East River? I mean, maybe she slipped, but—
Madeline: There have been other theories, though. People who knew her. Fans. She’d received threatening letters over the years, always from the same person.
Stevie Doyle: That was…yeah, that got investigated, I think. It didn’t turn out to be anything. Or they didn’t find the person, I’m not sure.
Madeline: But what do you think?
Stevie Doyle: I don’t think it’s worth digging into, if that’s what you’re asking.
If you’re looking for some crazy stalker, I think you’re going to come up empty-handed.
Unless, hey, maybe it’s Gina. Maybe she sent those letters.
Wouldn’t put it past her. She barely talks to the press, right? Maybe there’s a reason.
Listen, I’m running short on time, so if there’s anything else, maybe you could hit me up via email.
[Stevie closes our Zoom call.]
Gina Ross: Wait, he hung up on you? What the hell did you say?
Madeline: Nothing that shocking. I was pressing him, I guess, asking for his take on what happened—I brought up those letters that Lillian got with the same stationery, the ones you mentioned. The envelopes with the stripes. Actually, he suggested you might have sent them, Gina.
Gina Ross: The fuck?
[Sally and Gina exchange a very long look. Gina gives the teeniest shrug.]
Sally Schumacher: Okay. Madeline, I’m going to tell you something, but please just be responsible with this piece of information.
I.e., do not quote me specifically. I didn’t tell the police about it during the investigation, and I really don’t want to have to answer for that, so anonymous source, okay?
[Note: Flagging this section for confidentiality: redact for the final feature.]
Sally Schumacher: Stevie sent those letters. He came to me in a panic after Lillian was declared missing and confessed everything.
Madeline: I…sorry, what?
Gina Ross: You heard her, Cohen.
Madeline: I don’t understand. Was he stalking her? Brooke had mentioned the letters but kept implying there was something she wasn’t allowed to tell me. I sort of assumed that was just, you know, her attempt at a persona.
Sally Schumacher: Safe assumption, but in this case, there really is something she’s not allowed to tell you. Stevie paid her off, and she can’t say a word about it; she’s got a rock-solid NDA in place. But we don’t.
Here’s what happened: Brooke found his stationery one day, rifling through his desk for a pen or something.
She put two and two together, connected the dots that Lillian was getting those striped envelopes.
Could easily have been a coincidence, but she had an instinct for trouble.
If anything, at that point, she became the stalker.
Stevie had decided to drop his partnership with her.
As retribution, she confronted him. Stayed in the office later than usual and caught him with a letter, ready to send it.
From there, she blackmailed him into resuming their alliance.
Madeline: Not for money? Just—
Gina Ross: Just airtime! Ridiculous, the lengths she went to, but I guess she was desperate. I told you her shit wasn’t good.
Sally Schumacher: Anyway, Stevie worked with Brooke, eventually stopped sending those letters. Everything was normalizing, and then, in season three, Lillian vanished. And all those letters were entered into evidence.
Madeline: And you never told the police it was him?
Sally Schumacher: One, it wasn’t him. He sent the letters, yes, but he didn’t lay a hand on Lillian. He got so wasted at that after-party that I had to drag him back to my place and let him sleep it off on the sofa. He was there until I kicked him out at dinnertime the next day.
Madeline: And you were home that whole time? You didn’t go out again?
Sally Schumacher: Absolutely not. I wasn’t catatonic like Stevie, but I was tired enough to call it a night, that was for darn sure.
[I notice she fidgets when she says it, though, and breaks eye contact.]
Madeline: That’s his alibi, I suppose, but it still seems like there was motive—
Sally Schumacher: Not really. This wasn’t a psycho stalker situation.
That was just a role he was playing. Trying to scare her off the show.
That’s what he told me, and it tracks. He used to come to me over the years, and say, “Have you seen Lillian? She looks shaken up. Maybe she could use a week off from the show. This isn’t good for her. ”
Madeline: Why would Stevie have wanted that? Clearly, he was frustrated with her and with the show for not having him as a cast member, but—
Sally Schumacher: That I don’t know. I think you’ll have to go to the source to find out exactly why. Please do send him my mildest apology for telling the truth after all this time and maybe remind him gently that I did not sign an NDA.
Madeline: I’m curious. Why share this now? Why me?
Gina Ross: This is called “looking a gift horse in the mouth,” Cohen.
Sally Schumacher: No, it’s an interesting question.
[She pauses, starts to talk, then pauses again.
Finally, she starts.] I guess the older I get, the less tolerance I have for lying.
For bullshit. Especially when it comes to slander against my wife.
I am tired of continually covering up other people’s messes.
I was a caretaker back then, and look at me.
Decades later, still standing sentinel. I’m… just done.
[Gina reaches out to squeeze Sally’s hand.]
Stevie Doyle (via email): I think a phone call might be best. Let me know some times that work for you.
Then: