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Jun 25, 2013 · As the premiere episode of ABC's reality TV murder mystery "Whodunnit?" opened Sunday night, a voiceover explained that the contestants knew they were there to play a game, but "what they don't...
Jun 24, 2013 · The new ABC reality competition Whodunnit debuted last night and included the pretend murder of two contestants, one of whom wasn’t really a contestant at all. Some viewers were, at best,...
- The Murderer
- The Murderer’S Identity
- Scared/Spared Cards and The Test Contestants Take
- “Reality Fiction” and Not Explaining The Rules
- Contestants Lying to Each Other
- Post-Show Confessionals with The Corpse
- CSI’s Influence
- Whether Or Not The Contestants Are Acting and/or in Fear For Their Lives
- Death Scenes
- The Boston Marathon Bombing
The murderer does not know how the murders were committed because “they have to be a real contestant” who works alongside other contestants to solve the crimes. And Zuiker said that the murders “are motive-less crimes …. so it is rinse and repeat in terms of crime solving week to week.” I asked Zuiker if the murderer contestant could be marked for ...
Even Zuiker did not know who the murderer was, at least not until the eighth episode. “I swear to you, I said Dontae, and then I said Adrianna, and then I said Don, and then I stopped guessing. Literally had no idea,” he said. The producers who did know cast “somebody that could compete very, very hard and go through all the motions like a normal c...
Those who receive “scared” cards are actually those who have earned “the lowest scores on the written test,” Zuiker said. Why does the show not include that exam? He said ABC reality executive “John Saade didn’t want to stop and show people taking a test…that’s just not great television. We committed to reality fiction, this new genre, and we wante...
There’s a surprising amount of confusion for a show that is so simple, but that’s because the show doesn’t explain much on screen, though confusion was not the intent. “The audience is smarter than me. We really didn’t want to overly explain the rules of the game, but really let the reality fiction of the format take over,” Zuiker said. “We wanted ...
That contestants withhold information or lie to each other was intentional: “We were definitely looking for that to happen,” Zuiker told me. However, contestants can’t figure out the crimes “with 100 percent accuracy” without knowing what the riddle challenge reveals, and what clues were at each crime scenes. As to the riddle, Zuiker said it “is de...
They were added because people watched the first episode and thought the murders were real. “I was very against that from the very beginning, but I really had no choice because apparently America was quite confused early, and we lost a 1.3 million viewers, so we had to make some adjustments to see if we could get those viewers back,” Zuiker told me...
“We brought everything over to Whodunnit in terms of interesting crimes, evidence that we laid out for the contestants, [and] some of them key personnel,” such as CSI’s composer, makeup effects artist, and two writers. However, the crimes and forensics were “very CSI-light,” he said, so viewers and contestants could piece together crimes. “We wante...
Zuiker told me that he’s baffled by viewers who think the cast members are actors. “How do you possibly think people are acting? All the tears are real, they really are scared to death–not that they’re scared to lose their own lives and be killed and put in a grave … but they really are scared to get kicked off the show, and that fear of them getti...
The cast members were, however, asked to act out their death scenes after they were eliminated from the competition. The two or three people who had the lowest scores were separated from each other and the rest of the cast, and then the eliminated contestant was approached by Anthony Zuiker, Cris Abrego, or both. They told the contestants to “spend...
Incredibly, the April 15 bombings of the Boston marathon happened on the exact same day Whodunnit filmed Adrianna’s death by golf cart explosion, an episode titled “Kaboom.” While the contestants were sequestered and cut off from the outside world, including friends and family, as is typical for reality competitions, Zuiker said, “We had to tell th...
Aug 19, 2013 · The silly murder mystery reality show -- in which 13 contestants must find a killer among them while getting murdered (but not really!) one by one and being guided by Giles the butler ( Gildart...
- Joyce Eng
Aug 19, 2013 · ABC’s Whodunnit concluded with an intense, rapid-fire finale that had a challenge and pace reminiscent of an outstanding The Amazing Race finale. But it was guilty of emphasizing the wrong thing…
Jul 21, 2013 · Contestants are eliminated -- in the truest sense of the word - based on who did the worst job at figuring out the crime. Then their "murder" is the focus of the subsequent episode. In the finale, when three players are to remain, one will reveal the killer's identity and walk away with $250,000.
With Gildart Jackson, Kam Perez, Celine Eckwright, Melina Alves. In this murder mystery reality competition series, thirteen people must solve each other's murders under the threat of becoming the next victim in order to discover the culprit among them and win $250,000.
