SHOW DESCRIPTION
When Shapearl Wells’s son Courtney is found, barely alive from a bullet wound outside a Chicago police station, she immediately distrusts the official narrative. So Wells launches her own investigation into her son’s murder and teams up with journalists from the Invisible Institute to confront the police and find the truth about Courtney’s death. With heart-stopping bravery and honesty, through her grief Wells tells her own story in the podcast, richly interweaving her relentless need to fully understand her son's final moments with her mission to hold those responsible accountable.
SOMEBODY explores the racial disparities and turbulent relationship between law enforcement and citizens in one of America’s largest cities. As the team tackles systemic inequities within modern policing, it also challenges the asymmetrical, extractive relationship reporters often have with their subjects. Over the course of three years, Wells and the journalist team:
- File 80 public records requests, prevailing in several appeals
- Obtain video of Courtney outside the station, reaching up for help among officers, who offered none
- Uncover dispatch “unrelated to the case,” surfacing information on potential suspects
- Knock on every door on the street where Courtney was shot, with several neighbors confirming police had never contacted them
- Track down five witnesses whom detectives never connected to the case
- Identify compelling suspects and conduct a double-blind photo lineup
- Dismantle Courtney’s BMW (at the suggestion of a forensic firearms expert), discovering a kernel of gunpowder police failed to process
One podcast reviewer described the producers’ ethos in the form of a question: “Could ‘Somebody’ be the beginning of what narrative reparations sound like?”
SOMEBODY started as a limited series podcast from Topic Studios, The Intercept, the Invisible Institute, and iHeartRadio, in association with TenderfootTV, and premiered March 31, 2020. It is now in development as a TV series at Topic Studios.
Using SOMEBODY as one example, our panel will consider the opportunities and challenges of moving from podcast to television. How to widen the lens and reinterpret the story cinematically? How to give voice and dimension to characters both existing and new? And how to protect the story’s integrity while accessing the storytelling possibilities in a narrative TV fiction format?
Join us for a discussion into the dynamic process of reshaping stories for different mediums, while discovering the collaborative way the Studio’s verticals work together across formats.
KEY CREDITS
SOMEBODY is a co-production of Topic Studios, The Intercept, the Invisible Institute, and iHeartRadio, in association with Tenderfoot TV.
HOST: Shapearl Wells.
PRODUCERS: Alison Flowers and Bill Healy.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, INVISIBLE INSTITUTE: Jamie Kalven.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, TOPIC STUDIOS: Maria Zuckerman, Christy Gressman, and Leital Molad.
STORY EDITOR: Sarah Geis
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
ACCOLADES & AWARDS
PULITZER PRIZE FOR AUDIO REPORTING — Finalist
2020 THIRD COAST AWARD — Best Serialized Story
ADWEEK’S PODCAST HOST OF THE YEAR
IDA AWARD — Best Audio Documentary
AMBIES — Nominated for Best True Crime Podcast
SCRIPPS HOWARD AWARD — Excellence in Podcast Coverage
DEADLINE CLUB NOMINATION — Radio or Audio Feature Reporting
ELLIE AWARD — Podcasting
HEADLINER AWARD — First Place, Criminal Justice podcast category
KEY PRESS
Phoebe Lett, The New York Times
Libby Torres, INSIDER
Jess Joho, MASHABLE
Tom Kutsch, The Trace
Jake Greenberg, Podcast Review
SPEAKER BIOS
CHRISTY GRESSMAN
Vice President & Executive Producer, Podcasts
CHRISTY GRESSMAN leads Topic Studios’ podcast vertical, overseeing all aspects of series creative and production as well as distribution strategy. As Vice President and Executive Producer of Podcasts, she helps define the editorial vision, build the brand’s presence in the podcast marketplace, and drive the audio business as part of Topic Studios’ overall strategy across television, film and documentaries. Gressman also works closely with parent company First Look Media’s award-winning investigative journalism organization, The Intercept, sharing oversight of The Intercept branded podcasts and audio staff with Intercept Editor-in-Chief Betsy Reed.
Gressman was formerly a partner and the executive producer at the podcast network Night Vale Presents (Welcome to Night Vale, Conversations with People Who Hate Me, Alice Isn’t Dead, The Orbiting Human Circus), where she oversaw network-wide show development, production, and distribution. During her tenure, Gressman helped build the network from its original four shows into the home of fourteen shows downloaded over seven million times per month; giving rise to books, albums, and a leading live podcast touring arm that produced over four hundred live events all around the world.
With Gressman leading the team, Topic Studios continues to be a home for moving, compelling, boundary-pushing podcasts that are both entertaining and have a meaningful point of view on today’s cultural conversation. Given Gressman’s successful track record in the growing fiction space and Topic Studios’ podcasts focus on both nonfiction and fiction, Topic Studios is carving out a unique position as a studio with true cross-genre expertise.
QUAN PHUNG
Senior Vice President, Original Series
QUAN PHUNG is Senior Vice President of Original Series for Topic Studios, where he further builds the studio’s presence in the television marketplace by sourcing, developing, and packaging premium ongoing and event series to the broadcast, cable, and streaming community. Phung has over 20 years of experience as an executive and producer in the US and global TV market at various networks, studios and production companies.
Before joining Topic Studios, he was a senior consultant for STXtv, the scripted television division of STX Entertainment, where he advised them on their global content strategy and worked with their development team to source Asian American writers and projects to take to market. Prior to that, he helped launch Slingshot Global Media, an independent television studio based in Los Angeles backed by private equity; and was Head of Television for Scott Stuber’s Bluegrass Films, where he was one of the executive producers of the NBC series Whitney.
He started his entertainment career at NBC Entertainment, and later moved to News Corporation, rising to Senior Vice President, Creative Affairs, Twentieth Century Fox Television. Some of the Emmy-Award® winning series he developed during his tenure at Fox include How I Met Your Mother, My Name is Earl, Arrested Development, The Bernie Mac Show and House.
Phung is based in Los Angeles where he is overseeing a scripted content team.
SHAPEARL WELLS
Podcast Host and Vice President, Courtney Copeland Memorial Foundation
Shapearl Wells is a mother of six from Cicero, Illinois. Wells is the host of the award-winning podcast "Somebody," in which she investigates her son's murder and the institutional indifference surrounding it. She is also Vice President of the Courtney Copeland Memorial Foundation which works to reduce violence, strengthen education and build rapport between the community. In 2019, Wells was featured as a TEDx Talk speaker at Columbia College in Chicago.
ALISON FLOWERS
Director of Investigations, Invisible Institute
Alison Flowers is an investigative journalist at the Invisible Institute. She produced and appeared in the 7-part investigative podcast Somebody about the 2016 murder of Courtney Copeland. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, TIME, The Village Voice, VICE, The Intercept, The Daily Beast, Chicago Reader, and she is a two-time winner of the Hillman Foundation’s Sidney Award. In 2019, she co-produced the SHOWTIME documentary 16 Shots on the police killing of Laquan McDonald. She is the author of Exoneree Diaries: The Fight for Innocence, Independence and Identity (Haymarket Books, 2016).
TOPIC STUDIOS, the award-winning entertainment studio from First Look Media, develops, finances and produces provocative and entertaining content for all platforms including theatrical, streaming, television and podcasts. From Kevin Macdonald’s legal thriller The Mauritanian, starring Jodie Foster (Golden Globe® winner for her performance), Tahar Rahim (Golden Globe® nominee for his performance), Benedict Cumberbatch, and Shailene Woodley (STXfilms); and the Academy Award®-winning Spotlight; to documentaries The Fight, co-released with Magnolia Pictures and Mucho Mucho Amor on Netflix; to television with the Film Independent Spirit Award-nominated docuseries Love Fraud and the Emmy Award®-winning and Peabody Award nominated 16 Shots, both on Showtime; and the new surfing documentary series, 100 Foot Wave on HBO/HBO Max; as well as pioneering podcasts (Politically Re-Active with W. Kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu on Warner Media Podcast Network; Pulitzer Finalist and IDA Award-winning investigative podcast, Somebody, with iHeartMedia; and The Messenger and American ISIS on Audible Plus. Recent and upcoming films from Topic Studios include Pablo Larraín’s Spencer starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, with NEON; Lucy Walker’s wildfires documentary Bring Your Own Brigade; The Nowhere Inn, premiering September 17 (IFC Films), written by and starring Carrie Brownstein and St. Vincent; Adam Leon’s Italian Studies starring Academy Award® nominee Vanessa Kirby; Douglas Tirola’s Leonard Bernstein portrait Bernstein's Wall; Dream Horse (co-releasing with Bleecker Street), starring Toni Collette and Damian Lewis and directed by Euros Lyn; and Michael Angelo Covino’s The Climb (Sony Pictures Classics). Topic Studios is also ramping up its scripted television division, having set up two premium dramas arising from their previous first-look deal with Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip), including the adult thriller Savannah with PKM Productions for Amazon Studios; and is developing an English-language adaptation of the critically-acclaimed Israeli HOT comedy Nehama, among other projects.