Video Credit: Soap Hub
When she wasn’t playing intrepid reporter Jackie Templeton on General Hospital last year, Kim Delaney was busy shooting the Lifetime ripped-from-the-headlines film Long Island Serial Killer: A Mother’s Hunt for Justice.
Kim Delaney In New TV Flick
The movie is based on the true story of a woman, Mari Gilbert, played by Delaney, who faces every mother’s worst nightmare when her daughter, Shannan (Katharine Isabelle) turns up dead after going missing. At one point, Shannan’s death is attributed to possibly drowning, but Mari fights to have the case re-opened as a murder. The Emmy-winning actress says that she had to dig deep in order to do the story justice.
“It was [about] a mom losing everything,” Delaney recently told reporters at a press conference for the film. “That’s where I had to go. It was a very dark, deep place to go, because [my character] had already lost one daughter and then the other daughter, she’s lost in her own way.”
Mari was relentless in trying to find justice for Shannan before she met her own tragic end. “It’s crazy how this happened to this one person [who] was trying to raise her kids,” Delaney marvels. “Four daughters and she’s trying to do the best she can. So, I did have to go there — like where you’re just lost.”
Former Today show host Deborah Norville executive produced the film. She was familiar with the case, having covered it in real-life for Inside Edition, the newsmagazine show she hosts.
“I always have had this frustration covering these kinds of stories that…we’re just not able to get to the nuance,” Norville shares. “These are families, these are lives, these are human beings…their lives have been upended in the most horrific and unthinkable way.”
Just as Jackie appears to be willing to go the distance in order to keep Chase AKA “Harry” (Josh Swickard) safe, so will Mari with her kids. “What I brought to [this role] from myself was a mom who will go to any length for their child,” Delaney offers. “[T]his was the mom who would not stop at anything…”
Long Island Serial Killer: A Mother’s Hunt for Justice airs Saturday, February 20 at 8 p.m. on Lifetime. General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC. Check local listings for airtimes.
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