Disney
Ahead of the release of Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese on Hulu, director Clair Titley has opened up about why she didn’t approach the project like a traditional true crime title and her biggest priority when making the docu-series.
While there are many new documentaries coming to streaming services this month, Friends Like These should be top of the list. This poignant three-episode deep dive examines the case of Skylar Neese, who went missing from her West Virginia home on July 6, 2012.
For months, the 16-year-old’s friends and family were beside themselves as the authorities sought to figure out what had happened. In January 2013, Skylar’s body was discovered in a remote wooded area, the same month the perpetrators admitted to the murder.
The docu-series examines the case through social media posts, interviews, and Skylar’s own words, keeping her voice central to the story. Warning: if you’re unfamiliar with the case, spoilers ahead.
Friends Like These is not a traditional true crime documentary
Dexerto sat down with Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese director Clair Titley, who revealed, “ I didn’t think about it as us making a true crime series at all. I thought about it as us making a series about Skylar.”
The main “priority” was encapsulating the emotion and intensity of being a teen. “I’ve got to be honest, I watched a lot more teen movies than I did true crime to kind of get inspiration for this,” Titley told us.
Neese’s murder sent shockwaves through the community when it was discovered that the killers were her two best friends, Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf, who were secretly in a relationship.
With Friends Like These, Titley said, the aim was to “try and help the audience really get inside the head of a 16-year-old and remember what it was like when your friendships are more important than your parents.
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“And they feel like love affairs and everything is so intense and all encompassing. That was the priority for us: leading with that emotion and those themes.”
Another was “making sure that Skylar was this storyteller in her own right and not just a plot device in order to tell that journey.”
“I wanted the audience to feel an affinity with her friends and with Skylar, more so than feeling like armchair detectives,” the filmmaker added.
By telling the story through their social media posts, journal entries, and testimony from classmates, Titley explained that it’s as much a “series about the fragility and intensity of teenage friendship” as it is a documentary.
Those elements came “front and center”, although Titley specified that “of course we use true crime narrative techniques and tropes every now and again.”
Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese release date & time
Disney
The new docu-series lands on Hulu and Disney+ on Friday, March 6, 2026. Most of its shows tend to release at 12am PT/3am ET, although this can change, so just keep this in mind if you tune in at this exact time.
If you’re not based in the US, we’ve listed several other timezones below:
- 4am Brazil
- 8am UK
- 9am Central European Summer Time
- 12:30pm India Standard Time
- 5pm Australia
- 7pm New Zealand
All three episodes of Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese will be dropping on the streaming service at once.
In the meantime, find out how to watch the new Piper Rockelle documentary, whether Lucy Letby could get a retrial, and where Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper is now.
