Truth Be Told's cast on how the show has changed their perception of true crime

The “podcast boom” of this past decade has meant that the relatively new medium has started to have a ripple effect on other forms of pop culture. We’ve seen beloved podcasts adapted into television series, and we’ve also watched films introduce them as plot devices, only to make podcasters the butt of the joke. Now AppleTV+’s Truth Be Told hopes to take things a step further by examining how the true crime genre—effectively the blockbuster of podcasting—impacts the lives of its often unwitting subjects. Adapted as a series by Nichelle Tramble Spellman from the fiction novel Are You Sleeping, Truth Be Told follows true crime podcaster Poppy Parnell (Octavia Spencer) as she investigates the case of a convicted killer she helped put behind bars years earlier. Ahead of the series’ December 6 premiere, we spoke with Spellman and her impressive supporting cast—Lizzy Caplan, Elizabeth Perkins, Ron Cephas Jones, Mekhi Phifer, and Michael Beach—about our fascination with true crime and how the show’s approach to the medium made them second guess their own listening habits. Caplan and Perkins also revealed how the abundance of new TV series and streaming platforms has changed their careers.