Naomi Watts, Mia Farrow say The Watcher's secret was even kept from them

It was a perfect story for the time, one seemingly built for an exploding obsession with true crime, horror and class politics.

Reeves Wiedeman's New York Magazine 2018 article "The Watcher" pulled together all those elements, and told a tale equal parts ghost story and psychological thriller — the only difference is it was real. 

That is, as real as a mystery without a resolution can be. The story, now turned into the newest series on Netflix, documented the Broadduses (renamed Brannock for the show) moving into a New Jersey home. Soon after, they begin receiving threatening letters from a sender who identified themselves only as "the watcher" — a neighbour seemingly infuriated by rich out-of-towners taking a historic home from locals. 

That sender, who referred to the home as "the subject of my family for decades now," even went so far as to reference — and spy on — the Broaddus's young children. 

"Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me," the watcher wrote in one of their letters. 

"Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them too me."

Now creator Ryan Murphy — fresh off the success of controversial serial killer biopic Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story — is turning his eye to the house at 657 Boulevard, another odd and unsettling series of crimes. And this time he's working with a fairly star-studded cast: Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale star as Maria and Derek, the ill-fated couple moving in. 

Elsewhere, Jennifer Coolidge makes an appearance as the real estate agent who has a bit of a role to play in the true story, while Mia Farrow and Margo Martindale play the over-involved and vaguely threatening neighbours who flitted in and out of a real-life suspect list that was never resolved. 

It was those two things — Murphy's involvement, and the underlying theme of anonymous terror — that most of the cast say drew them to the project. 

"It was a fresh story for me," Watts said in an interview with CBC. "And I just imagined myself in the same shoes of that family, of being in a situation where they were finally able to get their dream home into their clutches. And that fear of it not going well — but not wanting to give it up at the same time."

Meanwhile, for Coolidge — a veteran comedian fresh off her first Emmy win for work on White Lotus — there were other motives. Firstly, she said she'd wanted to work with Murphy ever since he used her New Orleans home to film scenes from American Horror Story a decade ago.

But at the same time, she said the opportunity to work on something with a more sinister undertone informed her choice. (Though Watts shared the most difficult part of working with Coolidge is still "keeping a straight face.") 

"We always want to change," Coolidge said. "I think every actor wants to get out of the former way they were seen, they always want to sort of upgrade. But for a lot of the time, for a lot of my career … I don't know if there was that much variation."

Even four years later the case hasn't been solved, despite recent updates, such as the Broadduses selling their home for a loss, the police being roundly criticized for a failure to adequately investigate the case  — and a few discoveries that may constitute spoilers for the series. That gave the show both obstacles and opportunities.