ATLANTA — The reporter portrayed in the new "Richard Jewell" movie is being defended by the woman who was her roommate at the time of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
Jewell was called a hero and then labeled publicly as the bombing suspect before he was finally exonerated. The film portrays Kathy Scruggs as a reporter who traded sex for stories. But her longtime friend told 11Alive that could not be further from the truth.
"Kathy was not the type person who would have ever violated rules or ethics or anything like that," Penny Furr said. "She would never have used sex to get a story or get a source."
She met Scruggs 25 years ago. At the time, Furr was a defense attorney in a gang-related murder trial. Scruggs was covering the case as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. After the trial, the two became fast friends and eventually roommates.
Furr said the Olympic bombing happened about a year after the pair moved in together. She learned Jewell was a suspect long before it splashed across headlines.
"She said she had sources inside the police department," Furr said. "Kathy was very colorful. Very smart, extremely smart, extremely driven and just a very hard worker."
Furr said she wants Warner Bros. to warn viewers that the movie is based on a true story. However, all of the events are not completely factual.
"I think that's the least they can do," she said. "I think they should have come to talk to people that knew Kathy before."
"Especially if they were putting something inflammatory like that in the movie," Furr added.
She said the claims about her friend left her shocked and hurt. She believes the movie sacrificed accuracy for drama.
Furr hasn't decided if she will see the movie yet but highly doubts it. More than anything, she said she wants people to know Scruggs didn't deserve this kind of treatment.
Scruggs's former employer, the AJC, has called the depiction "defamatory."
"Richard Jewell" premieres Friday. 11Alive caught up with the cast at a red carpet event held in Atlanta earlier this week. Director and producer Clint Eastwood attended the event along with stars Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, and Paul Walter Hauser.
Hauser, who stars as Jewell, didn’t appear to be concerned by the backlash.
“I think the feeling is that it sorta came out of nowhere," he said. "This project has been around for about five years. It was a very famous screenplay. It had Leo (Leonardo DeCaprio) attached to it at some point."
"They could have done their digging," Hauser added. "It was the last-minute decision by the AJC, and while I appreciate their opinion I’m not going to let it be a shroud or shadow over the celebration of this moment for the Jewell family.”
When asked if not enough research was done for Olivia Wilde’s character - Scruggs - Eastwood did not hold back.
“There’s only so much research you can do. You can’t live inside the people because they no longer exist. We know as much as anybody knows," Eastwood said. "Kathy Scruggs was a very interesting personality, and she seemed to, and she did define the answer to it so how she did it, nobody will ever really know. It could have certainly happened this way.”
The New York Times reported that there is a disclaimer at the end of the film that says the movie is "based on actual historical events" and that "dialogue and certain events and characters contained in the film were created for the purposes of dramatization.”
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