‘Homicide: Los Angeles’ Producer Talks Future Seasons in Different Cities: ‘There’s So Much Potential’

Homicide: New York and Homicide: Los Angeles have captivated Netflix viewers with grisly true-crime cases set in the Big Apple and the City of Angels. Each episode features key figures involved in the murder cases, whether it be family members or investigators, and chronicles the case from start to finish.

New York and Los Angeles were obvious choices to focus on true-crime stories, but producer and Alfred Street Industries co-founder Jane Lipsitz revealed to TV Insider that her team “looked into other cities as well when we were doing the initial prep work for the series.”

When asked if future seasons would be set in a different city or if Season 2 would go back to New York and Los Angeles, Lipsitz responded, “I’m obviously very attached to the current group of characters that we have right now because you’re getting to know them. I do love the way that the cities kind of inform the whole character of the series. We looked into Las Vegas. We looked into Dallas, Miami, and Chicago.”

She added, “I feel like there’s so much potential for the future. I’m sort of torn between wanting these guys to tell all of those stories. I think we’d be happy coming back to New York and going back to Los Angeles. But in addition, would love to explore like Chicago, Vegas.”

For Lipsitz, her team was “really focused” on the contributors in each of the episodes. “We wanted really interesting, introspective, great storytellers who could talk about the cases in a way that not only gave you the details of the case but also had their own sort of personal narrative attached to that,” she explained.

“When we came to Los Angeles, it was different because we were working with the sheriff’s department, not the NYPD. Once we identified that was the division of law enforcement we were going to work with in Los Angeles, we started narrowing in on both prosecutors and investigators. And then also at the same time, identified what amazing cases that they were involved in Los Angeles.”

The most high-profile case of both Homicide: New York and Homicide: Los Angeles was the Phil Spector case. The record producer killed aspiring actress Lana Clarkson in his Los Angeles mansion in 2003.

Related

Dick Wolf's 'Homicide: New York': Where Are the Killers Now?

“The cities play a character in themselves,” Lipsitz said. “There’s a totally different narrative that exists in the LA version. LA’s obviously the home of Hollywood and smoke and mirrors and celebrity, and it infiltrates both what the investigators are dealing with, as well as the DAs. We did want to identify one celebrity case, and Phil Spector was the one that was also connected to the sheriff’s department.”

Both versions of Homicide get to the heart of the cases: the victims and their families. One of the Homicide: Los Angeles episodes centers around the murder of Teresa Broudreaux. Her family believed her husband, Ronnie Fematt, had killed her for decades. Fematt opened up in the series about how the weight of Broudreaux’s death affected him. Decades later, Broudreaux’s killed was revealed as Robert Yniguez.

“I think for Ronnie public vindication was really important, and he deserved that,” Lipsitz told TV Insider. “In that case, there’s the positive to being on the show. I think a lot of times, people want their loved ones to be remembered and in perpetuity, and that pain does not go away when the headlines die. That pain sticks with them forever. I think it’s very important for us as the producers and the storytellers to really honor their memories in a respectful and intelligent way.”

Homicide: Los Angeles and Homicide: New York, Streaming Now, Netflix