We sat down with award-winning filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman—best known for her powerful documentaries “Roll Red Roll,” “Victim/Suspect,” and “Sasha Reid” and the “Midnight Order”—to talk about her latest project, “Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?” As the director and showrunner of this gripping three-part docuseries from ABC News Studios, Schwartzman brings her signature investigative depth and empathetic storytelling to a case that continues to raise troubling questions. The series is now streaming, and premiered on Hulu on September 29, 2025.
How did this project originate?
This is really a labor of love from a lot of different people. The family’s unwavering fight for justice allowed them to meet people and pull them into the orbit and get people to help. So enough documentation was gathered, and then the incredible producers took hold and chased it down, put it together, and got Dakota and Elle Fanning involved. I came on late in the process and I’m super grateful that there was incredible work done before I got there — I was able to hit the ground running. It’s rare that you have so many documents and the autopsy file, and we had a medical professional who had already done an assessment. So there was a lot of information that was already laid out. And it was my job to gather and convene as many people who could speak to what had happened the night of, and who Ellen was and who the family is, and then tried to track down some newer folks, like Sam’s colleague.
When certain people choose not to get involved and be interviewed, how do you navigate the story?
It’s important to try as best as possible to give voice in whatever way you can. So in Sam’s case, we have a message he leaves Ellen of ‘I love you’ on the phone. So you can hear his voice and see him and see when they’re in love with each other. Text messages are fantastic. You can understand their relationship a little bit by the text messages. and then we have to go with whatever statements are public or, you know, on record. So with Sam, we have a few statements, and then we have a statement he gave about almost a year ago, so we can only use what we have. So that’s what you try to do. We’re at ABC News Studios and everything was [conducted] with the highest level of journalistic integrity. We are going with what’s on record, what’s public, and people’s authentic memory — when you tell as broad of the story as possible, and you lay out the facts, you let the facts of the stories represent themselves.
What is it about Ellen’s story and her friends’ and family’s stories that led you to deciding this is what you wanted to work on next?
I’m from Philly, right? So this is in my backyard. And Philly’s a big city, right? But she died in Manayunk, and I spent so many hours of my childhood playing tennis at the Arthur Ashe Center in Manayunk. I know the streets. I know where I know this girl. I can remember being 26. I remember how I felt when I was about to get married. I remember it all and could relate to her, and I found her family so poignant, so loving and generous. They were so generous with us. Really letting us in. They would always say thank you, and they wouldn’t have to say thank you. So I felt very moved by them, very connected to the place. And Goldberg and I went to the same high school — I’m older, so we didn’t know each other, but it’s not a big school. And that made me feel really connected.
And then the thing that really alarmed me was law enforcement and the narrative around the story: that it was [ruled] a suicide was really setting a dangerous precedent in pointing to a woman’s mental health. This is old. Women, for millennia, have been called unstable or hysterical. We know what has been done to us because of these labels. So that got my hackles up. This is a dangerous precedent. If you walk into a scene and it looks like that, then you better have ironclad proof that this was suicide, and there is no ironclad anything in this case. What’s clear when you look at the autopsy photo and you see Ellen is that there are stab wounds all over her body and in her head. The more I got to know about her — she was a Pilates girl, like me, she had maybe one piercing at seven, she did not do contact sports — she’s a girly girl. So that blood, that gore, that’s overkill, right? And it made me very, very concerned that they are going to weaponize a woman’s mental health, and then put stigma on it, because she went to therapy three times or that she was on medication. We need to be really careful about that. Because a lot of Americans are on medication for anxiety. A lot of us go to therapists. It should not be stigmatized or weaponized against us. I mean, we are still fighting so much to get rid of this stigma, and it’s like, when is that going to change? So, I hope in some part that this really speaks to people, to realize this is still a problem. This should not be stigmatized, and I think in 2011, it was a much different climate; where in 2025 there’s so much on narcissism and emotional and toxic relationships or anxiety.
How much of the investigation evolved while you were in the making of this?
The first day of filming was February 3rd, when the Greenbergs went to Philadelphia to City Hall. So we knew that a date was coming, and initially our shoots had been planned for that date and when it was announced, I was like, ‘Oh, my God — we have to film. Everyone cameras up — this is happening now.’ And a few days before February 3rd, we had Dr. Osborne say, ‘No, I wouldn’t call this a suicide anymore.’ And it was game on — the train left the station. So in terms of the investigation, it was more like the lawsuit really took off. To bookend that, October 14th, which is in a few weeks, [is when] the city will give us an answer. Even if the city says ‘undetermined,’ there can be a push for a reexamination.
Can you please speak to using reenactments and when you would or would not choose them to tell a story?
When you have to show something that happened, there are ways to do it with objects, right? And we did a lot of set dressing. We matched the scene in the kitchen so that we could see in the space and get a sense of what’s important, [like] the objects on the countertops. We have the footage of the lobby and the elevator and the gym — there was no camera in the hallway. And that hallway is where so many things happened. So it felt really important [as to] how we were going to have people talking about something but where we can’t see anything. So we want to make sure we really matched that space so you get a sense of visual distance and focal distance. And you [want to make sure you’re] really precise about reconfiguring the point of view in there, so that could land you in the space.
I also wanted to take some moments from Ellen being in her house, with her guy, and show the good times. With lighting and with tone, things just shift. And with her sadness, we wanted to be able to sort of give you a mood with that. For me, they feel really important because they sort of flesh out as much as they can. Same with giving you documents and tape and experts walking back into that apartment — that really helps me build the case.
What is the most challenging part of directing and creating pieces surrounding such intimate and personal human experiences?
Well, you want to honor everybody involved. And then you also want to tell an unbiased, thorough, excellent story. And in this case, those things were in alignment. So that’s great. Sometimes we can have a story where you really are going deep with someone and you’re like — that person’s lying. And I have to show that lie, right? People have their theories and opinions and you have to keep it as journalistic as possible. So with this one, nothing about that was hard, because everyone was speaking their truth and we were going by documents and records. Everything was in alignment. Sitting with people who love Ellen and are remembering this, talking about what they lost and what they don’t have so that other people can relate — it’s important. I had two editors on this project who are amazing. They both have children. And at the end of episode two, people are sobbing. And my editor was like, ‘I had to stop and go hug my children.’ Whether we want to have children or being a child [of someone] — whatever the pieces are, I always want them to relate in some way.
