Five hours with Kendra Licari: Director explains what the Netflix interview was really like

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish has had everyone glued to Netflix since it dropped. Viewers are still reeling from the shocking twist in the story. The documentary follows the case of Kendra Licari, the Michigan mum who catfished her 13-year-old daughter, Lauryn, and bombarded her with anonymous, abusive messages for almost two years.

In the doc, Kendra admits she sent Lauryn and her then-boyfriend Owen up to 40–50 messages a day. Some of the texts were as cruel as telling Lauryn to kill herself. She claims she didn’t send the very first messages, but said she then “spiralled” and didn’t know how to stop. At first, because the messages used Lauryn’s nickname and included personal details, suspicion fell on their close friends. It was later revealed that Kendra was behind all of it.

“It was a spiral,” Kendra said in the doc. “Kind of a snowball effect. I don’t think I knew how to stop.” She also explained that she was in an “awful place mentally” at the time. Her own sexual trauma began resurfacing as Lauryn entered her teenage years.

One of the most fascinating parts of the doc is that Kendra agreed to sit down for an interview. The director of The High School Catfish has now revealed what that experience was really like.

Kendra Licari repeated herself ‘multiple times’

via Netflix

The director, Skye Borgman, said that they spent five hours interviewing Kendra. Not everything made the final cut, but Skye felt it was important to hear Kendra’s side of the story.

Most Read

JK Rowling crashes out in long rant as Harry Potter director blames her for lack of reunion

‘An outright violation’: Health clinic releases statement after ‘unethical’ staff TikTok

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

“I think it was important to me to get Kendra’s perspective out there,” Skye explained in an interview with PEOPLE. “And it was more important to get the kids’ perspective out there. But to hear from her and to hear what her answers are was something that I felt was really beneficial to the documentary.”

She added that Kendra repeated herself “multiple times” during the interview, and not everything she said made it into the doc. “I felt like the clearest answers she gave are what eventually made it into the documentary,” Skye said.

For Skye, the challenge was balancing Kendra’s explanation with Lauryn and Owen’s perspective. They lived through years of anonymous abuse, only to later discover it was coming from Lauryn’s own mother.

As Skye put it, whether Kendra was telling the truth or not was ultimately something she could not “judge 100 per cent.”