From Classroom to Crime Scene | Reeth Mazumder-Roberts’ Rise in True Crime Television

The TFS and Yorkville University grad is producing and writing for some of the biggest true crime franchises on Paramount Plus and CBS – with a landmark historical limited series for Fox Nation on the way.

Reeth Mazumder-Roberts originally came to TFS’s Writing for Film & TV program in 2017 from a Bollywood acting background – a career that looked successful from the outside, but felt limiting from within.

“When I was acting, the stories were about me, around me, but I felt so pigeonholed,” she said of the leading lady roles she was cast in at the time. “Whatever my manager gave me is what I ended up doing. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a voice.”

It was then that she began thinking about the worlds she could build for herself as a screenwriter – an idea that ultimately led her to Toronto Film School.

Classroom Foundations at TFS and Yorkville University

Reeth – who also graduated as valedictorian from TFS affiliate Yorkville University with a Bachelor of Creative Arts degree – has recently accumulated an impressive roster of credits in unscripted true crime television.

She has worked as producer, associate producer, and writer across FBI True (CBS/Paramount Plus), PD True (Paramount Plus), and Holly Jolly Homicides (Paramount Plus/Apple TV), with dozens of episode credits across multiple seasons. And her next project – a three-part historical limited series for Fox Nation – is her most ambitious to date.

Reeth credits much of this success to TFS’s screenwriting program, which expanded her creative horizons far beyond what she initially imagined.

“When I came to the screenwriting program, I literally had no idea what I was getting into,” she recalled. “All those different aspects of writing we learned about – from sitcom and drama, to broadcasting and feature writing – it changed the way I perceived writing and the possibilities it could open up. It was a much bigger world for me.”

Graduating from the BCA program at Yorkville in 2023 allowed Reeth to push those limits even further, giving her the confidence to navigate the business side of the industry and further cementing her ambition to work in television.

“Getting into the Bachelor of Creative Arts program gave me another kind of confidence, which lead me to the corporate side of filmmaking,” she said, noting that, during her convocation speech at grad, she talked about her goal to work in television.

Breaking Into True Crime Television

Six months after graduating from Yorkville, Reeth landed her first show, but only after applying to hundreds and hundreds of positions. After a while, she stopped counting.

Her big break, she said, came on a winter day just as she was settling in to take an afternoon nap. Her phone rang and on the other end was a man identifying himself as showrunner, but she didn’t realize the gravity of the call under after she’d hung up.

“One phone call changed my life,” she said. “At the time I picked up, I did not yet know it was from a 12-time Emmy Award winner, but within a week, I was on my first show.”

Reeth first joined FBI True as an associate producer and researcher, and would go on to work across five seasons of the show (from Season 5 through Season 9), rising to producer by the final season.

Two episodes she produced for the current ninth season – Nuwaubian Nation: Taking Down a Dangerous Cult Part 1 & 2 – are among the work she is proudest of, she said.

Producing and Writing for PD True

On PD True – Paramount Plus’s series following real-life police detectives, sheriffs, and forensic experts – she was promoted to producing within six months.

She recalls that once the final edit of her first episode came together, the show’s Series Producer told her not to return to associate producing, and that she needed to be a Story Producer now. She went on to produce six episodes across Seasons 3 and 4.

Several of the stories she brought to the show had never been covered by any other true crime series. One such case centred on a gang called the Singing Frogs (Season 4, Episode 10) – a case the production had been reluctant to pursue, because there was little information online and no obvious archive to draw from.

“They said to me, ‘This has never been done. How do we get the archives? There’s nothing online. Nobody knows about this,’” she recalled of the investigation into the 2005 shooting death of Aron Adagio at a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles. “I told them I’d get it. And I got everything. Everything is there in that episode.”

The episode is one she still holds close, as the victim’s elderly father, who lives in Arizona, had never had his son’s story told publicly. But Reeth obtained a victim impact letter and had one of the investigating officers read it on set – a format not typically used in the true crime genre.

It was a moment, Reeth said, that stopped the whole production in its tracks: “When she read it, there was not a single person on set who didn’t tear up,” she recalled. “I still keep in touch with the victim’s father in that case. I still wish him well for different seasons and different holidays. It’s important to me.”

Another episode she championed, A Cold Dark Secret (Season 4, Episode 2), had initially been passed over by the showrunner because both detectives on the case were still active-duty NYPD and there was a genuine concern that securing departmental clearance for them to appear on camera in the docuseries would be next to impossible.

But the case was too remarkable to turn down: in 2019, a woman came forward to tell NYPD that she had witnessed her mother’s boyfriend, a barber, dismember a body decades earlier. Through the ensuing investigation into that report, remains found in Queens, NY were eventually identified as George Seitz, a World War I veteran who had been missing since 1976.

Intrigued by the story, Reeth pushed back and fought for the case to be featured, determined to get the necessary permissions – and she did. The showrunner later called it his favourite episode of the season.

Emotional Challenges of True Crime

Reeth said that working in the true crime genre requires emotional endurance as much as professional skill.

“When I started my first show, I had difficulties falling asleep, because I had to think about the next case, the research, constantly,” she explained. “There were times where I have broken down.”

Working closely with victims’ families – particularly on Holly Jolly Homicides, which investigates murders occurring during the Christmas and Thanksgiving seasons – brought her into contact with grief in an immediate way.

But over time, Reeth said, she found her footing: “I kind of pivoted from being tough to being empathetic and professional. I came to understand that while I cannot undo what has happened, what I can do is tell the story correctly.”

A Groundbreaking Limited Series About Carlos the Jackal

Her Fox Nation limited series is a different kind of project entirely. It centres on Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – aka Carlos the Jackal – the Venezuelan-born militant who became one of the most infamous international terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s, linked to a string of bombings and attacks across Europe and the Middle East, including the 1975 hostage-taking at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna.

The series is built around something few productions have ever achieved: an interview with the man himself, conducted while he remains imprisoned in Paris, now in his eighties.

“Throughout the show, you hear his own voice,” Reeth says. “The things he says are crazy, but he says them. It is him.”

The three-part series traces Sánchez’s emergence, the height of his activity, and his eventual capture and imprisonment. Reeth produced the first episode, covering his origins and radicalization – territory she was drawn to instinctively.

“I always want to know the backstory,” she said. “Everybody knows what happened later because he was so famous. I did not know about him at all – but once you type ‘the Jackal,’ you realize.”

The series is expected to release in 2026.

Returning to Directing and Expanding Horizons

Even as the Jackal series heads toward its release, Reeth has moved on to a new chapter – one that marks her return to directing. She is currently filling the dual roles of director and producer on two medical documentary series simultaneously.

The first, entitled Operation Heart, profiles heart surgeons all over the world. With shoots already completed in Mexico, Milan, and Canada, the series will soon be heading to PBS and City TV. The second is a lifestyle format called Table Talk.

All the while, Reeth has also maintained a connection to TFS, continuing to teach a camera and lighting fundamentals class for Writing for Film & TV students – the program she herself took as a student.

The lesson she most wants students to take away from her classes is one she has lived for herself.

“I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is how to work in a corporate structure and not lose yourself in it. My attitude is one of constant learning, adjusting, and moving from one type of work to another. I have no ego. I’ve forgotten what ego is,” she said.

“It’s important to keep that hunger. I’m never 100 percent satisfied, because I constantly want t do better and better.”