Was ‘Gone Girl’ Based on the Laci Peterson Case?

American Murder: Laci Peterson is the latest true-crime documentary to take Netflix by storm since it first premiered on the streaming platform on August 13th. It tells the story of the life and death of then-27-year-old Laci Peterson in 2002, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared. Her body was found several months later in the San Francisco Bay Area, and her husband Scott was convicted of first-degree and second-degree murder in 2004. The case has been the subject of a number of documentaries and true-crime podcasts in the past, and even a recent Peacock documentary Face to Face with Scott Peterson, which came out just a week after Netflix’s and shared his side of the story. Nevertheless, what caught so many viewers’ attention with American Murder: Laci Peterson was just how similar the case is to the fictional one at the center of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel and David Fincher’s 2014 film adaptation, Gone Girl. Specifically, how much Ben Affleck‘s character Nick Dunne resembles the behavior and mannerisms of Scott Peterson.

What Is ‘Gone Girl’ About?

Gone Girl follows Amy (Rosamund Pike) and Nick Dunne, a young suburban couple who reach an impasse after five years of marriage. On their five-year anniversary, the day Nick planned to ask for a divorce, Amy goes missing, and Nick soon becomes the prime suspect. Despite his innocence, his strange behavior raises suspicion with the police and turns the general public against him. Amy, however, is still alive, and actually staged her disappearance and planned her own death to get revenge on Nick for becoming the kind of man she did not agree to marry. While Nick is getting lambasted in the media, Amy hides out at a campground in the Ozarks watching the media circus and plotting her next steps.

Nick and Amy’s toxic marriage is at the center of Gone Girl, which doubles as a relationship drama and crime thriller. As Nick figures out the elaborate ways Amy set him up to take the fall for her staged disappearance, he discovers that this isn’t her first time framing someone for a crime. Gone Girl has been compared to a number of real-life cases, including that of Laci and Scott Peterson, and cases that happened after the film came out, like Sherri Papini.

Is ‘Gone Girl’ Based on Laci and Scott Peterson?

In a 2012 interview with Entertainment Weekly, author Gillian Flynn was asked if she based her novel on a particular real-life case, to which she replied, “I definitely didn’t want to do anything specific. One could point to Scott and Laci Peterson — they were certainly a good-looking couple. But they’re always good-looking couples.” She went on to say, “It could be any number of those types of cases, but that was what kind of interested me: the selection and the packaging of a tragedy.” In the same interview, Flynn calls herself a true crime addict, and though she’s never explicitly confirmed that the Peterson case was her inspiration for Gone Girl, there are some undeniable similarities.

A major element of the Peterson case is the fact that Scott was having an affair with another woman named Amber Frey; a detail that led many to turn against Scott, including members of Laci’s family. In Gone Girl, Nick cheated on Amy with another woman, and his mistress coming forward turns public opinion against him, despite Nick not actually being guilty of committing any crime. Laci was eight months pregnant at the time of her disappearance, and in Gone Girl, news of Amy’s pregnancy is revealed during the investigation, though she’d been faking it all along. After Amy’s disappearance, Nick doesn’t react with the quickness or sense of urgency that others, like his sister and Amy’s parents, expect from him, leading to widespread suspicion that he was involved. In American Murder: Laci Peterson, several interviewees, including detectives, journalists, and Laci’s friends note that Scott didn’t seem distraught about his wife’s disappearance but appeared nonchalant and disconnected since she first went missing.

Though the blonde Rosamund Pike doesn’t look much like Laci Peterson, Affleck does look remarkably like Scott. Fincher has also compared him to Scott Peterson, and though Affleck has never stated he based his performance on Scott, there are some notable similarities. Aside from their physical resemblance, Nick’s behavior and mannerisms in Gone Girl are similar to those of Peterson after his wife’s disappearance, especially during his televised sit-down interviews. Though Nick wasn’t guilty in Gone Girl, Affleck’s channeling of Scott Peterson, whether intentional or not, certainly made him seem so.

Gone Girl is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.

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