Exactly how Netflix managed to persuade Kendra Licari to be in a show about her own crimes

Before the Netflix series Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, most of us had probably not really heard of Kendra Licari. But now, I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t stop thinking about what she did.

The documentary film told the story of Lauryn Licari and her then boyfriend Owen. When Lauryn was just 13, she started receiving messages from an unknown number. At first, they said Owen wasn’t interested in her, and told her to not come to a Halloween party with her school friends. But after a break in the messages, things got really sinister.

It turned into a daily barrage of hate and threats, for the next 15 months. Sometimes Lauryn would be getting up to 50 messages a day, commenting on her appearance, telling her to end her life, and making grotesque sexual comments about her and Owen – who were both underage at the time.

via Netflix

In a shock turn of events, it was revealed the texts were sent by her very own mother. Throughout the Netflix documentary, Kendra Licari said she was trying to hunt down who was sending the texts, and was worried about Lauryn’s safety. She was the scared and caring mother. This was all extremely jarring when mid-way through the documentary it flipped, and we found out she had been the one sending it all.

Now, the show’s director has shared more about how Netflix managed to secure the interview with Kendra Licari for the show. It wasn’t easy to get Kendra to agree, and she finally did so very late on. The entire film had already been filmed before she agreed to be interviewed.

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“It was a long process with Kendra,” director Skye Borgman told Tudum. “That was appealing to her, [to] sit down and tell her story from her perspective and that Lauryn [could] see her do that. She wanted to do it, I think, for her daughter.”

Why she agreed appears to be that she feels “remorseful” for what she did, so finally agreed to answer the questions people have about the case.

Borgman added: “She’s remorseful that she has severely altered her relationship with her daughter in most likely a negative way. I mean, will they have a relationship? Will they get through this? I don’t know. There will probably be some kind of relationship. Will it be the same? Absolutely not. There’s no way it can be the same.”

via Netflix

In a separate interview with Variety, about getting people to interview for the film, the director said: “Everyone 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 traumatising to everybody involved.

Borgman also said Kendra appeared “nervous” to speak out but “loved” the experience in the end. Kendra described being in a Netflix show as “fun”.

Borgman said: “[Kendra] was nervous about going on camera, because just sitting down and telling your story is a nerve-racking thing sometimes. But 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.”

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.