"The Mr. Rogers of murder," a stepson who's also a friend and a man who dares to lean on anything.
Let's dive in and investigate these behind the scenes facts about 'Dateline''s Keith Morrison.
While it might seem like
Keith Morrison was literally born to be the true crime guru of "Dateline,"
that absolutely wasn't the case. As he told GQ, he had originally planned on becoming a
lawyer. As unlikely as it might seem, he says that he couldn't keep out of his own way,
and his tendency to get into trouble put an end to that career path.
He was 20 years old when he looked into becoming a minister like his father. He
went as far as to fill in for a regular minister in a small Saskatchewan town, but when he found
himself speaking to a woman after the death of her husband, he knew it wasn't for him, explaining -
"It was one of those unforgettable moments when you understand this is real, and you better
shape up and grow up. […] That was probably the moment I realized I shouldn't do this."
After he began running errands for a neighbor who happened to be a newspaper editor,
he got into journalism — but he almost dropped out of that,
too. He told The New York Times that the make-or-break moment was when he
was reluctantly sent to interview a woman after her husband had been hit by a car and killed.
Producer Vincent Sturla has worked with Keith Morrison for a long,
long time, and explained to GQ -
"He has a great deal of empathy
for people […] He's very sincere, [...] kind of like the Mr. Rogers of murder."
Morrison initially had no desire to get into the genre for a very
legit reason. Whenever he stars a new story, it still nags at him, explaining:
"I thought it was kind of tabloid-y. I felt it took advantage of people's
pain. It gives you a few moments of, 'Should we really be doing this?'"
In the end, though, that's precisely the sort of attitude that has not only
kept him on the air for decades and earned him legions of fans,
but what keeps families going to him and choosing to open up about the darkest time of their lives.
Morrison describes the process as cathartic for people who are struggling to process the
horrors that have happened. Strangely, he told People that getting emotionally
involved with a story is what, according to him, makes him a complete failure as
a journalist. Journalists are, after all, supposed to remain impartial,
and Morrison adds that if empathy is a weakness, he's willing to live with it.
Keith Morrison was still an up-and-coming reporter at CTV National News when he met
then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his press secretary, Suzanne Perry. GQ
reports that Perry and Morrison would go on to marry, and their family would
include four children together, as well as Perry's son from a previous relationship.
That ended up being Matthew Perry of the "Friends" fame,
and Morrison has spoken out about his famous stepson in several interviews,
saying nothing but nice things, even if Perry's level of fame surprised him.
"Did you think he would be as famous as he is today?"
"(laughs) Sorry. "
All the evidence might suggest a close-knit family, but when Perry's memoir came out in 2022,
there was enough in there to suggest that things weren't always stress-free. Perry wrote that he
had seen his childhood as a relentless battle with Morrison over the attention of his mother.
While Perry did refer to his relationship with his stepfather with something of a reserved
sort of affection, he also called him "Keith Morrison" throughout conversations about him.
In an interview with Vanity Fair to introduce his podcast series, Keith Morrison recalled his most
memorable interview. In a 2010 interview with Jaime Ramos, Ramos shared his experiences with
his mother's suicide, his father's arrest, and ten years of sexual assaults carried out by his uncle.
Ramos was 21 when he got involved with Patty Presba,
who was both married and more than two decades his senior. He recounted how under her guidance,
he had killed her husband and burned his body in a staged car accident, confessing the crime at the
urging of his grandmother. Originally a "Dateline" television episode, Morrison
said that when it came time to develop a podcast, he knew this was a story he wanted to feature.
His conversation with Ramos ran four hours — much longer than
the usual interview, with Morrison recalling -
"People lie to you all the time in these interviews […] it's self-serving the way
they tell a story, but not in this case. […] He didn't hold back. He didn't try to avoid
blaming himself. He didn't try to push blame onto anybody else. It was extraordinary."
When Buzzfeed News talked to some of the behind-the-scenes people who make
"Dateline" happen, producer Carol Gable shared a fascinating tidbit
about Morrison's process. The first time she worked with him,
she had compiled a massive tome of information about the case they were going to be working on.
When it came time to head out for the five-day trip, she recalled that he showed up with an
overnight bag ... and that was it. It wasn't until later that she realized there was a very
good reason for that: He'd read the file in its entirety, and remembered it all.
She went on to say that he was one of the best-prepared correspondents she had ever worked
with, but according to Morrison himself, there's a little more to the story. He says that while
he relies heavily on his team to put together a briefing that guarantees he's walking into
an interview well prepared, his thought process going into an interview is the opposite approach.
"You don't go into interviews, uh thinking you know everything. You
don't know anything. The story is their story."
Keith Morrison was famously portrayed on "SNL" by Bill Hader,
who in a 2019 interview with Today said that he was not only a massive "Dateline" fan,
but admitted that he'd never met Morrison before.
They, of course, already knew all that, so when they took Hader into
the "Dateline" editing booth to reportedly get a few voiceover pickups from Morrison,
Hader was like a kid in a candy shop when his idol came in to surprise him.
When Morrison was asked what he thought of his "SNL" counterpart,
he joked that it had probably tacked a few extra years onto his career. For his part,
Hader was just trying to control his emotions throughout the interaction.
"I'm so nervous right now!"
"You're nervous?"
"This is me nervous, it's like 'OK cool.'"
He shouldn't have been: Morrison flew from Los Angeles to New York just to meet him,
and if that's not a seriously wholesome vote of confidence, nothing is.
Keith Morrison has interviewed people who have done horrible, terrible things,
but according to what he told Vanity Fair, it isn't really intimidating.
Part of the reason for that, he explains,
is that the most dangerous and obviously guilty people are the nicest in interviews,
because they think they're the smartest, most charming person in the room.
To them, it's often their time to convince everyone of their innocence.
They're also there because they want to be — no one is blindsided by it,
and no one is told that they need to be interviewed. Morrison explained -
"I want to hear the story. I want to hear what their explanation
is. And it's always fascinating, no matter how bad they may be."
When Morrison participated in an 'Ask Me Anything' segment on Reddit, he also said
that there were some interviewees that he didn't entirely know how to respond to. In particular,
he called out a preacher who had killed and dismembered his wife,
but still believed they would be reunited in heaven, adding -
"Didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that one."
When it comes to television juggernauts, "Seinfeld" has been up there since it first
debuted. According to Vulture's 2014 breakdown of what had become a billion-dollar empire,
Jerry Seinfeld and creator Larry David have most recently been raking in about $400 million
per year in royalties, and hilariously, Keith Morrison is getting a share of those profits, too.
Morrison was in a Season 4 episode called "The Trip," when he reported
on the escape of a suspect in the so-called Smog Strangler case,
which of course happened after Jerry and George left the back door of a police car open.
Morrison told The Wrap that he sort of accidentally ended up on the show,
and just happened to not be working when he got a phone call asking if he'd read
a small part for "Seinfeld," recalling of the experience -
"I was there maybe 20 minutes, half an hour, and I got back in the car and forgot all
about it. [...] My little tiny part, I get a check for like $5 practically every month."
Everyone has that list of famous people that they'd like to meet,
and Keith Morrison is no different. In 2020, he participated in the interview
series "7 Questions with Emmy," in which the daughter of Idaho news director Nate
Eaton asked him who he would want to interview that he hasn't before.
"I think I'd like to interview people like the Dalai Lama or the Pope, or,
sort of people who think about things a lot."
Morrison told Vanity Fair that he's long been fascinated by the philosophical questions that
surround death and by extension how they apply to situations where that death is premature.
He explained that if there was one thing that he had learned from his work as a journalist,
it's that death impacts the world in much the same way as a stone thrown into a calm pool, stating -
"If there's any unifying factor in death, the way I see it,
it's the harm that it causes among the living after an incident like this occurs. Waves of
brutalized change that occur in lives that can stretch over generations. The murderer
doesn't kill one person. The murderer creates horrible damage all around."
Even casual viewers of "Dateline" will start to notice something particular
after watching a few of Keith Morrison's episodes. Namely, his tendency to lean on
things. The Wrap asked him about it, and while he initially denied knowing how it started,
he finally admitted that there actually was something to it.
It started, he said, because he hated doing a kind of reporting called "standups." That's
basically when the reporter or journalist is talking into the camera, and it's easy
to see how that could be uncomfortable. Morrison said that many times, it's why
reporters have a tendency to walk when they're setting up a story. For his style he said -
"Whenever I've had to do a standup, I figured the best thing to do, is to look relaxed and
not look too excitable on camera, so I just lean on something. It just became a thing."
From sifting through crime scene photos to reading about some of the nation's most gruesome crimes to
interviewing suspects, there's no denying that Keith Morrison's job is ridiculously
stressful. So, how does he step away from that and keep it from taking over his entire life?
He talked to Today about precisely that,
saying there were some things that kept him going — starting with the statistics.
"In the years that true crimes has been such a popular genre,
the crime rate in America has gone way down."
He also said that one of the most important things he keeps in mind when he's working is
that there is joy to be found everywhere — particularly in the small towns that cases
often take him to. He enjoys meeting people from all over the country, from all walks of life,
and hearing stories that might not have gotten told, had he not asked, saying -
"To me, it's the greatest adventure. I pretend to work. It's not real work."