Behind the Scenes of New Docuseries

There was a lot that filmmaker Dani Sloane was drawn to when she first read Matt Sullivan’s 2022 Rolling Stone feature “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” about the death of Bianca Rudolph, allegedly at the hands of her husband, Larry. “It was before any verdict was issued,” she remembers. “I just immediately gravitated towards this world.” Larry Rudolph had been a prominent dentist in Pittsburgh, as well as an active member of the Safari Club, an international organization for wealthy and connected big-game hunters. But in 2016, when the couple were on safari in Zambia, Bianca was shot and killed while in their cabin. At first, Larry claimed it was an accident — the gun had gone off while she was packing it up. Then, the story changed to suicide. Larry moved his longtime mistress, Lori Milliron, into the couple’s marital home within months, igniting a firestorm of gossip. Five years later, he was arrested for Bianca’s murder, and Lori was arrested as an accessory.

The story was too juicy for Sullivan — and later, Sloane — to pass up. “It felt so dynamic and rich in terms of all these different spaces that Larry and Lori occupied, this bizarre dental world, the Safari Club and their code of ethics and morals,” Sloane tells Rolling Stone. “It felt like it had all of these elements to it that I had never really seen before in one true crime story.”

Sloane crafted a three-part docuseries based on the article, Trophy Wife, which is co-produced by ABC News, XTR, and Rolling Stone Films, and set to premiere on Hulu July 21. The show isn’t your standard true-crime fare, leaning into the abject ridiculousness of the worlds that Larry inhabited. It features interviews with business associates, employees, and Rudolph family friends from Pittsburgh; the guide who shepherded the couple through their last safari; the Zambian investigator who was first on the case; the FBI agents who brought the cold file back to life; the lawyers who prosecuted and defended the case; and the children of Larry and Lori, respectively, who are forced to reckon with the crimes of their parents. “We talked to dental assistants who were terrified of Larry,” says Sloane. “Seeing that visceral fear, and the power that they felt like he had over them, really paints a picture that is quite compelling and troubling.”

Here, Sloane talks about what it took to bring the docuseries together, the eventual verdict in the case, and what really happened that morning in Zambia.

As you started to dig into the story of Larry Rudolph and Lori Milliron, what was it that surprised you about it?
Every piece of the story, you can overturn over and over again and see it from a different vantage point, see something new. It’s part this twisted love story between Larry and Lori. It’s part this really dynamic family saga, and part this workplace drama, set against these really rich and dynamic worlds. Everything that was simmering beneath the surface, I found shocking and surprising. And then, of course, once the verdict came down some months later — the way that the physical evidence was presented, the way that the crime scene was examined, the way that it became this really dynamic cat and mouse game between Larry and Lori and the authorities. Ultimately you come away from it with answers to some questions, and new questions completely.

How did you get access to Larry and to Lori? And what are those relationships like?
Matt Sullivan had established a relationship with Lori for his first article, so he was very helpful in making that intro. In terms of Lori’s family and the dental assistants and the Safari Club members, it was really just picking up the incredible work that Matt did, and making sure that they understood that what we were hoping to do was to further what was in the article and to dig a little deeper, to really make sure that everyone had their say. And the same goes for Larry. When Matt was working on the article, access to Larry was a bit more challenging because he’d been in federal prison for the time leading up to the trial, whereas Lori was not. So once a verdict had been issued, Larry was able to speak to us, and that was obviously a huge, helpful piece of being able to tell this story.

What was it like to interview Larry and Lori’s respective children?
The Julian [Larry’s son] interview was from a 20/20, piece. We reached out to Larry’s kids. I think they were wanting to put this chapter behind them, understandably. But Lori’s daughter we did speak to, and she had never spoken before. She was incredible. It really comes through in the series how much she loves her mom and how much she wants to fight for her and to fight for her mom’s side of the story to be told. It was a really emotional interview. You could see how painful this was for her and her family. It was really the first time that she and her siblings and the rest of their family felt like they could tell the story of who their mom was that wasn’t the story that existed in the tabloids.

One thing I think the documentary does well is leave it a little ambiguous as to what the real story is. Should we believe Larry, or should we believe the people who are saying Larry murdered his wife?
Whenever it comes to telling a story like this, I always want to lean into the truth. And I think the truth in this story is that there were two people in that cabin in Zambia that morning. It was Larry and it was Bianca. And in terms of what happened, a lot of it is based on character and speculation and past actions, based on past behavior. But I think the thing that fascinates me so much about this story, and stories like this in general, is this is about what happened that day at the crime scene between these two people. It’s not about how he acted in his business. It’s not about how he acted as president of the Safari Club. And yet all of that gets brought into any case, right? Nothing exists fully in a vacuum. So how do we separate the character witness and the circumstantial evidence from the physical evidence? It creates such a puzzle and a conundrum. What kind of evidence are they looking at, what’s admissible in a court versus in the court of public opinion, where you can look at all of his past actions and the fact that this affair had been going on for so long, and go, “Of course he did this.” That juxtaposition has always been so fascinating to me, and I think this is a case that highlights it so beautifully.

Were you surprised that he was found guilty?
In the case of Larry, I wasn’t necessarily surprised by the verdict — we all thought it could have gone either way. In the case of Lori, there was more surprise. Her side of the story, there’s a lot more opaqueness and questions that exist around her sentence. Like, she was not in Zambia at the time of the murder — the accident, whichever way you view this — she was thousands of miles away. And a lot of that accessory-to-murder charge stems from hearing what Larry said to the bartender in 2020, years after Bianca died. So there’s a lot of legal minutiae when it comes to Lori’s case that’s a lot less straightforward than Larry’s, and takes a lot more analysis to really understand. In terms of the severity of the sentence that she got, that was definitely the surprise: 17 years.

Aside from this being a fascinating story, with all these interesting characters and all these backdrops, what’s the bigger message that you want to get through with this series?
When you look at Larry Rudolph — and all of the things he had done over the years in his business, with women, to his wife, to his family, in the Safari Club, in the big-game hunting world — by all accounts, he always just felt like everything was his for the taking. He did think he was untouchable. And there is something about watching someone take a step too far, ultimately facing the ramifications and the consequences for their actions, that I think is important to say, it’s important to see. And to see justice being meted out. It matters to tell stories where the legal system — depending on how you feel about all the evidence that was presented — potentially does get it right.

In the case of Lori, it’s the way that we tell stories about women. Women are presented in such a one-sided, one-dimensional way. If you’re a bitch at work, you’re a bitch in every other aspect of your life. If you’re a saint, you’re a saint. We’re often so reduced to one trope, one adjective. And we all know that’s not true. Being able to represent women for who they really are, and to see all the sides of them — the good, the bad, the ugly, the complicated — is something that really matters. The stories that I’m interested in telling are ones where you’re able to do that.

This is why it’s so crucial that we were able to talk to Lori’s daughter and see that beautiful relationship, this single mother who worked so hard to provide for her kids, who fell in love with this guy, and fell into this world. Did she get carried away with it? Did she go too far? Was she a victim? Was she a villain? Was she an accomplice? Was she an innocent bystander?

The production team went to Zambia to visit the camp where Bianca was killed and interview the local guides and investigators. What was that trip like?
It was incredible. I’d never been on safari. I’d never been anywhere so incredibly beautiful. Lions were walking by where we were sleeping at night, and elephants walking by while we were having breakfast. It was magical. You could understand why Larry loved being there, and why he would constantly return to this place. Zambia was such a special place to them. It made us all feel much more connected and closer to the story. And I think it was crucial to be there and to talk to all these people who were at the scene of the crime, because they were the ones that were closest to what happened. They were the eyewitnesses to everything that unfolded, and that very crucial two-day period after Bianca died. So it was really important for us to be there and to speak to them and to make sure that their views were presented in the series.

All of this [last] trip that they went on was about hunting this leopard. These leopards are so elusive, you really have to track them. And our guides were telling us, sometimes you won’t see a leopard for, you know, a month. The miracle of all this was, we had flown into Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and drove six hours to get to where we were staying. We literally got there, put our bags down, and they were like, “We just happened to see a leopard in a tree about two or three miles away from camp. Let’s go.” And that first two hours that we got there, we filmed that leopard footage. It was perfect. It just all came together.

The former ambassador to Zambia is in the film. He’s such an interesting character. What was he like to work with?
Oh, my God. We had so much fun with him. He is a character. I mean, you could do a multipart series on him alone, super dynamic. Just so much wound up on the cutting room floor. But he knew it all. He was a big part of this. And his love for the country of Zambia really came through. Everyone loves him, and we’re so lucky that he was willing to participate, to talk to us, because I think he adds such a richness, and he is the consummate character. 

Was it tough to get folks to talk before the verdict came out?
Larry loomed very large in their lives for a long time, so there was definitely a lot of bravery that people showed in coming forward to tell their truth. There was really a fear here. Whether it was real or perceived, I think people were afraid of this guy. And people had some trepidation about, you know — maybe they talked to Matt, but they didn’t fully tell all, because there was always the chance that [Larry] was going to get out, and would want to exact vengeance, in their minds. Some people were more willing to come out of the woodwork after they knew that he was in jail, and he wasn’t getting out.