I Was A True Crime Junkie Until My Ex Boyfriend’s Murder
Like any good millennial, Katie Mack was swept up in the era and allure of true crime media.
“My podcast downloads consisted of My Favorite Murder, Morbid…Criminal. And I watched all the documentaries and docuseries on cults, serial killers, survival stories, and cold cases. I was obsessed,” said Mack.
Katie Mack, an actor, writer, producer, and self proclaimed true crime lover explains her obsession with late night wikipedia rabbit holes going from the unibomber to OJ Simpson to NXIVM. Mack wore her true crime knowledge like a girl scout sash of beautifully colored mugshots, weapons, and handcuffs. She sounds like someone who would pursue a PhD in forensic studies or investigative journalism. But Mack no longer consumes true crime media. Instead, she’s writing her own solo show #UglyCry, commissioned by off the WALL productions, which centers on the death of her ex-boyfriend, turned friend & collaborator, Eric Anthamatten.
“With all my preparation, knowledge maybe I had forgotten my own vulnerability. Hearing ‘I never thought it would happen to me’ would ensure that it never would happen to me. You know?”
Then, May 2021, Katie received a phone call from Eric’s brother informing her of Eric’s murder. Suddenly, she was no longer safely tucked away on her couch with a bowl of popcorn watching The Staircase. Now, true crime had wormed its way onto Mack’s phone and deep into her heart.
“At first, I didn’t want any of the details. I didn’t want a true crime story about a young man who went to Mexico after a breakup and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What I wanted was Eric. I wanted him to call me on the phone and tell me that he had just spent another day riding horses and eating mangos on the beach. I wanted 100 more videos of him dancing in his little airbnb.”
After the first two weeks of shock and missing her friend, she awkwardly realized she didn’t know what the next steps were.
“I realized that I don’t even know how to grieve, or even what it really meant. Do you post about it on instagram? Am I supposed to keep it a secret? Or parts of his story a secret? I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know exactly what to do.”
That’s when Mack says she knew she had to find a way to process this grief and loss through art and the first kernels of #UglyCry started to emerge.
“I didn’t know exactly at the time what I was going to be writing but I knew that I wanted to write the show not just about Eric but WITH Eric. One thing led to the next and eventually we created an AI Eric.”
#Uglycry: grief hits different eventually has pinned itself as an interactive immersive theatrical experience, requiring audience members to use their personal phones. This technological Eurdician attempt to bring Eric back to life begs the question, what happens to our digital selves when we die? And can our digital selves influence those we leave behind?
“#Uglycry is a show for those who suspect that our digital lives and our real lives intersect a lot more than we admit”, says Mack, “which I think is true for nearly everyone”.
Change the way you interact and think about theater and grief. See #UglyCry: grief hits different in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Stage (Sept 22nd-Oct 14th) and off-broadway in New York at The Chain Theatre (Oct 28-Nov 18th). For more information about the show and the Katie Mack, visit www.mackstage.com and follow @mackersnyc (IG/TikTok).
