{"id":114274,"date":"2025-09-02T23:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T23:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/114274\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T23:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T23:17:08","slug":"the-high-school-catfish-director-on-why-kendra-is-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/114274\/","title":{"rendered":"The High School Catfish’ Director on Why Kendra Is Guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t
SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers for the documentary \u201cUnknown Number: The High School Catfish,\u201d now streaming on Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix\u2019s documentary \u201cUnknown Number: The High School Catfish\u201d \u2014 currently No. 1 on the streamer\u2019s Top 10 movies \u2014 tells the disturbing story of Lauryn Licari, a teenage girl, and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, who, in 2020, after only a few months of dating, started receiving harassing text messages from an unknown caller.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you,\u201d one text read. That was followed by, \u00a0\u201cHe no longer likes you and hasn\u2019t liked you for a while. It\u2019s obvious he wants me.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe teenage couple, who attended a small high school in Beal City, Mich., were cyberbullied on and off for close to two years. At one point, 40 to 50 aggressive and menacing texts were being sent each day. Even after they broke up, both Licari and McKenney continued to receive vicious text messages from their harasser. At one point, the stalker, who pretended to be another classmate who liked McKenney, told Licari that she should kill herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe local police \u2014 who were contacted by Licari\u2019s and McKenny\u2019s parents \u2014 began interrogating their fellow schoolmates, as well as McKenny\u2019s cousin, up-ending their lives. Eventually, the FBI got involved, and soon discovered that the culprit didn\u2019t go to high school in Beal City. The cyberbully wasn\u2019t even a teenager. The perpetrator behind the nonstop harassment and physical threats was Lauryn\u2019s own mother, Kendra Licari.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKendra and Lauryn Licari
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary \u2014 based on Lauren Smiley\u2019s New York Magazine story from January \u201cWho Was Cyberbullying Kendra Licari\u2019s Teen Daughter?\u201d<\/a> \u2014 is set up like a mystery, with the revelation that it was Lauryn Licari\u2019s own mother who was torturing her coming like a gut punch. Bodycam footage shown in \u201cUnknown Number: The High School Catfish\u201d captures Kendra being told she\u2019s been caught, and watching her world fall apart in real time is like watching a car crash.<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety spoke to \u201cUnknown Number: The High School Catfish\u201d director Skye Borgman, who most recently directed Netflix\u2019s \u201cFit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tYou had incredible access to a large pool of people involved in this case, including Lauryn and Owen, their classmates, Owen\u2019s parents, the police, FBI agents who worked on the case, and even Kendra Licari, who was released from prison in August 2024 after serving a 16-month sentence. Was it challenging to convince them all to be part of this doc, and why do you think they agreed to be in it?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tEveryone we talked to had such big feelings about this story. It was very immediate for them, and it was very raw. So, asking them to sit down and talk to us was really a matter of me gaining their trust and understanding why it was that they wanted to tell their story. For the most part, people just wanted to be heard, and they felt that this was an important story to tell because of the cyberbullying element. It was incredibly traumatizing to everybody involved.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\t\tYou showed some of the texts that were sent, but how many did you go through during pre-production?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere were like 350 pages with multiple text messages on every page. Kendra and [Owen\u2019s mom] Jill would print them out and hand them off to law enforcement.\u00a0So, there were thousands and thousands of texts that we went through.<\/p>\n

\t\tDuring your interview with Kendra, she seemed remorseful, but did you ever feel like she was putting on an act?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tKendra is a little bit of an enigma. I think that she had a lot of time to think about what she did. She was in therapy when she was incarcerated, and I believe that she\u2019s still seeing a therapist. She has put thought into what she did. I don\u2019t know that she\u2019s fully realized or recognized what it was that she did or why she did it. I guess only Kendra could really answer that.<\/p>\n

\t\tI would never want to show my face again if I were her. Why do you think she sat down for your cameras?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tShe was nervous about going on camera, because just sitting down and telling your story is a nerve-racking thing sometimes.\u00a0But she was so great, and she actually ended up really loving the experience. At the end of it, she said it was kind of fun. She laughed about things, and I think it was really an opportunity for her to think about things a little bit more in depth. Every time I would ask a question, she would really have to think about some things, and I think that was really good for her.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou set up the doc so that at the beginning of the film, when Kendra is being interviewed, the audience has no idea that she is the culprit. She seems like a mother who went through hell. And then about halfway through the film, there\u2019s the twist. Was it always the plan to make her seem innocent and then make the reveal?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was really based on her interview. We sat down and talked with her, and because of the way that she conducted herself in the interview and because of what we knew and what we had come to find out in the story, \u00a0we felt that it was pretty accurate to include her the way we did before we revealed that it was her who committed the cyberstalking.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe bodycam footage of Kendra being told by the cops that she had been caught, and then her having to tell her daughter and husband, was gutwrenching. Did you know that footage existed when you started making this doc?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe worked with law\u00a0enforcement and the prosecutor to get access to that footage, which is so telling. When we first were cutting the film, we just played the entire body cam footage for its entire duration. We couldn\u2019t stop watching it. We were deeply invested in watching it play out. Ultimately, \u00a0we realized we couldn\u2019t play it for 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou also directed \u201cAbducted in Plain Sight,\u201d which had its fair share of twists and turns. Did making \u201cUnknown Number\u201d remind you of \u201cAbducted in Plain Sight\u201d?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIn all of these stories, from \u201cAbducted in Plain Sight\u201d to \u201cUnknown Number,\u201d it\u2019s the way people behave and what drives them to such behaviors that is probably one of the more interesting aspects of each story. There are a lot of jaw-dropping moments, but to me, really, it\u2019s the people\u2019s behavior. That\u2019s what makes it so fascinating. <\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers for the documentary \u201cUnknown Number: The High School Catfish,\u201d now streaming on Netflix.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,61385,134,344,435],"class_list":{"0":"post-114274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-documentaries-to-watch","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-netflix"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}