Hey guys, it's Andrea Gunning.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Anna Sinfield, host of The Girlfriend's Spotlight.

It's the new weekly series from The Girlfriends.

If you haven't heard their show, I would recommend starting from the beginning with season one.

It follows the story of Carol Fisher as she uncovers her recent ex boyfriend sinister past.

Carol enlists his other ex girlfriends to help investigate the mysterious death of his first wife, Gail Katz.

Now, after two seasons, they're producing weekly episodes all about women accomplishing great things against the odds.

Anna and I discuss what this work means for us and what's coming up on.

Both of our shows.

We hope you enjoy it.

Annah, Thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you so much for having me.

I've been spending a lot of time listening to Spotlight and it's a really exciting project.

Give me a little bit of an explanation on what Girlfriend's Spotlight is and what was the inspiration behind going from the narrative to the weekly.

The Girlfriend's Obviously, it was this story about a group of women.

They all dated the same guy, and they started to suspect that he might have murdered his first wife, and they all came together and they put him behind bars, and so it's like this great story of women coming together and ultimately triumphing.

And then afterwards, you know, there was this leftover little investigation from it where this torso washes ashore and it's misidentified as that first wife, Gail, and I kind of hated that not ever being solved.

Nobody ever knew who that woman was in the end, once she was kind of decided that she wasn't Gail in the first place.

Yeah, and so we then went and investigated that, and so that was like a really lovely, like first two narrative series, they like bled onto one another, and then we're kind of left with this huge community of listeners and a feeling that the show wasn't done.

Yeah, and so Spotlight is a series of sort of eight episodes that we put out in between our narratives where we get to do these one on one conversations with women who also triumph together or triumph over adversity in some way.

But they're just kind of these one off stories, very much like obviously Betrayal Weekly.

Can you kind of describe Anna for me, like the framework of women winning and what does that mean to your team?

Yeah, so women winning.

It took us a while to land on that women winning made it broad, but it also kept us always staying true to this idea that we want to make sure we don't just tell true crime stories where women are victims and they suffer.

Instead, at the end, you need to feel like, actually, I can go through something really shit and at the end of it, I could still survive.

I could still come out on top.

And like, those are the messages that I want people to get when they're on the tube or the subway, or they're on the bus or their bike and they're commuting to work and they feel like they've had a bad day because that someone's just dumped them or they've had an argument at work.

But at the end, you're hopefully also feeling like, oh, actually, maybe I can deal with this.

I think we're telling really important stories that don't get heard enough.

And you know, it sounds a bit trite to say, because you know, so many people talk about how women's stories aren't heard enough and all of that, but it's actually true, and these particular stories where women are from all over the world as well.

I had an interview with a woman in Sri Lanka today, And I've interviewed people from kind of every continent for this show, and they are of every age, and some of them are just to all intents and purposes.

When you look at them, they're just grandmothers, you know.

And then you talk to this grandmother that people probably would look at on the street and underestimate, and you realize they've done something absolutely crazy, like death defying, or they have changed their government for good, They've like saved lives.

And I think I feel really proud of the way the feed is kind of making people look at people who perhaps could have been overlooked in a new light and like celebrate people who aren't being celebrated enough.

And so I'm really proud of that, and I'm passionate about that and please that people are willing to talk to me about those amazing moments.

Well, you know, I really loved your decision of like, I love that I can hear you ask the questions.

You have this wonderful tone of voice which is really disarming and soft and welcoming, and so it's a really beautiful balance of living in someone's story as they're telling it, and then if you have a question or if you want to react, then you're reminded that it is a conversation.

It's a really beautiful balance, and I think you guys did a great job and have really nailed that.

Ah, thank you.

I love that we've managed to include that because it feels like it's kind of integral, so that like we're not alone, we're in it together.

Philosophy of the girlfriends.

I absolutely found myself just devouring the Madison and Christine is it Madison and Christine story?

The twin sisters?

That story was incredible.

I mean, I think that was truly a great example of women coming together and fighting the good fight.

And not only that, but there.

Was a lot of similarities in that story that reminded me of betrayal.

So where did you find that?

And tell me a little bit about making that.

It was one of the producers on our team who found the story.

You know, for context of what this show is about.

One of the twins was getting photos of her from a boudoir shoot she did years ago posted online and she didn't know where from.

But once we got talking to them, they were just so happy to talk about their story because they were really keen to get the kind of messaging out there.

So they came together, you know, twins Injustice, and managed to kind of not only take those photos down, but figure out who it was and put them behind bars.

So it's yeah, you're right.

I mean, it's a classic girlfriend's story, but it's also a classic betrayal story.

So maybe that should have been our partner episode.

But yeah, once we got talking to them, they were just amazing.

They're such wonderful characters, and they really care about people understanding what non consensual pornography is and how pervasive it is in our sort of modern internet world.

That is something that we deal with a lot and on our show.

I mean when you're talking about especially internet crimes, which I think is often overlooked because it's this like nebulous thing of who's really portraying in who's really consuming it, and it feels intangible, right because it's somewhere else.

I mean, it was a big undertaking for those women, but they were dogged and Tenasian like she had to navigate the world and not know who was doing it to her, but she was suffering because of it and I remember that was such a powerful moment, in such a vulnerable moment.

I thought was beautiful and really well done.

Oh, thank you so much.

I wanted to ask you because I think one thing that we've had to come to terms with and try and figure out when we're telling so many different stories like that one, and we've obviously gone for this tagline of women winning, and I was interested in listening to some of the betrayal weekly episodes.

You guys have obviously kind of solidified around the idea it's got to be a betrayal, which should be.

Like relatively simple.

But I ever wonder if that becomes a sticking point that you've liked made that decision that that's what the show's about.

In the same way that obviously now we can't just tell the stories of women losing, which sadly is most true crime stories.

I think our biggest struggle when we first started on the weekly series was diversity of stories.

Right, We couldn't just tell week over week stories of different affairs, or stories of c SAM or stories of sexual abuse.

We really wanted to showcase that there's different forms of betrayal out there in different journeys.

We have an incredible community and a ton of people that write in But really at the heart of these stories and what mo our producer that works on this series we really have to talk about is.

What is the love story here?

What is the point where there is true connection that the audience can relate to in some way.

But the foundation, the core of these stories is the love story and the aftermath because of the deception in betrayal, so it's just as important to have that love story in the formula as it is in the deception.

And so that is really the secret sauce.

I love that because if the audience can't really relate or acknowledge what that is for someone, then they don't necessarily care.

About the deception or the betrayal.

It's why in the first season of The Girlfriends I spent so long.

I mean, it's not the only reason, but we invest so much in the friendships of the women and how funny and quirky they are, and you know, we really have a whole episode where you get to know Gail, who's the victim of the story, and the reason for that is because it's the right thing to do, and she was an interesting person who deserved to be at the center of her own story.

But also because in order to really understand what it is to lose someone and for them to die in such a horrific way, you need to understand how much of a whole human being they are.

And so it's like, in whatever like state you're setting up, it's like you give them something to lose, and then the loss actually has impact.

I mean it's on a human level at all.

Really, that makes sense, as like two humans talking and sharing stories one on one over coffee, that is the most important.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I struggle to listen to really horrible stuff all the time.

I mean, it's obviously part of our jobs, but when I'm listening to things as a just a podcast listener, if it's just kind of Gore after Gore after Gore, I know that's like the popular stuff, and it's if it's really sensational.

But I don't know if it's as popular as people think it is.

I think we like the suspense and the drama of life, but do we need to know the worst bits or are they just traumatic?

I really appreciate when producers really sit with what the human inexperiences aside from the crime itself.

And I think you guys are doing.

That really really well.

And I love the element of women banding together, especially in that case when I'm talking about, like with Madison and Christine, because it really did take an army to track down the person that was putting these images online.

Law enforcement wasn't taking it seriously, and it was definitely a pursuit of figuring out, like, I have to advocate for myself and there's a ton of women here that are going to advocate along with me, and that that.

Little nugget feels very betrayal too.

Yeah, because that comes up a lot in Betrayal as well, isn't it?

You know, women coming together?

Yeah, it's really interesting.

Our first episode of the Weekly series from last season is a story of this woman named Stephanie and her husband was unfortunately drugging her and putting images of her online.

Oh my god, and she wanted to.

Be anonymous, and she was really struggling when we first met her.

And since she told her story, since we've put out the show, she's connected with other people that have worked on either the Betrayal Weekly or upcoming limited run and has just wanted to come out with her story and own her voice in a way that is so far removed from when we first met her a year ago.

And it's just this connection between her and these other women who may not have been betrayed exactly, but very similar to the way that she was betrayed by her husband, and just the power of being able to stand alongside somebody else and reclaim her voice is unbelievable to watch and witness.

It's really beautiful.

So do you want to tell me a little bit about the next season of The Girlfriends.

Yes, So on July fourteenth, we have got our new show coming up.

It's our brand new limited series called The Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer.

I'm so excited about this.

The story we're telling is kind of a direct comment on the first two seasons.

So we're telling the story of a woman called Kelly Harnett who went to prison for a murder that she says she didn't commit.

Okay, Instead, she says it was her very violent ex boyfriend, and when she was in prison, she was passionate she did not commit this murder and she was going to get herself out of prison, and so she started training herself up to become a jailhouse lawyer, and in the process of trying to fight to get herself out of prison, she also got several other women out of prison.

But like the reason I say.

It's like a bit of a comment on what came is because really it's an exploration on what it means to be a victim or a villain in America today, you know.

And so the first two seasons it was so simple.

You know, we had a very clear cut victim and someone who was very clear cut as the villain, and we just like put them in those camps.

It worked really well for me narratively.

It meant that I could kind of right them as like a traditional story arc, and we didn't explore the complexities of what it means to be in either of those roles and the sort of range that humans have.

Whereas this series, obviously you've got someone who the justice system believes committed a crime and she is saying she didn't, And when you start to explore her story, you can really understand why it's a really complicated thing to label someone as a bad guy, because it's not always that simple.

There's lots of reasons why people end up in difficult criminal situations.

I do think that there is more space for understanding the complexity of the human experience, especially in the audio format.

Life is not black and white, crimes aren't black and white.

What happens in the aftermath is in black and white totally.

Yeah, And I mean that's a huge part of the series is that you hear me wrestling with that idea of like, what kind of person do we accept as just being a victim of something?

Because actually there is a playbook that we expect victims to play by and if you don't play by that, and if something bad happens in your life and you end up involved in something criminal, you do end up being charged with a crime.

You know that happens time and time again that people who just don't seem victimy enough they end up going to prison because that looks like a villain, it doesn't look like a victim.

And that's yeah, screwed up but interesting to explore.

Yeah, it is, and it's delicate and it's really tough.

And we do have this saying on the Betrayal Limited you know, there are no perfect victims and how relatable is that?

You know, that is what you say to your girlfriend's over at coffee that I think we should give more space to in you know, various formats, not just audio but TV too, and those conversations.

I think people are having more open mindedness to different types of victims.

And I do think we're seeing a change, don't you.

I think so.

Yeah.

I think the tides are turning.

And what have you got coming up right now?

We are actively putting out episodes for season four of Betrayal of the Limited Run, and this season tells the story about a woman whose husband is a police officer with the Colorado Springs Police Department, and he not only betrays her but also his community and really unpacks a lifetime of lies and what that does for your lived experience.

I mean, it's really wild to sit with people who.

Have to go back twenty years and talk about, well, I thought the birth of my son was one way, and now I've learned new information twenty years later, and that day was fundamentally changed for.

Me as well.

As we really go into policies and things that happen internally at the Colorado Springs Police Department, and we got access to this incredible tape his entire Ia files that were all recorded, and so we have hours and hours of footage and just hearing him basically just lie to his colleagues and his bosses, and it really just shows, you know, if he's doing this internally at his job, what is he doing to his wife?

And we kind of just explore that.

It's really fascinating.

And then starting in August, we are putting out season two of the Always On for Betrayal so News story Weekly, which is exciting.

Busy, we're both busy.

Yeah, it's been a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much.

And I'm going to listen to that series.

I'm Benjinette.

It sounds amazing.

Thank you, thanks for listening.

Check out The girlfriend Spotlight and the next season of The Girlfriends coming July fourteenth.

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com.

That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com.

We're grateful for your support.

One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal five star reviews, Go A long Way, A big thank you to all.

Of our listeners.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership.

With iHeart Podcasts.

The show is executive produced by.

Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlin Golden.

Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinchech.

Audio editing and mixing by mattel Vecchio.

Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins.

Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains.

Music library provided by mob of Music and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.