Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong

Episode: The Real Family History Behind Longlegs
Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Heidi Wong
Produced by: Crime House / PAVE Studios

Episode Overview

Heidi Wong delves into the chilling real-life inspirations behind Osgood Perkins' 2024 horror film Long Legs, exploring the dark family secrets, infamous crimes, and the psychological and supernatural elements that shaped both the filmmaker and his work. Wong connects the film’s disturbing narrative — a string of familial murders, a mysterious doll, and secrets spanning generations — to the true stories of the Perkins family (including Anthony Perkins of Psycho fame), the haunting murder of JonBenet Ramsey, and the legacy of hidden truths and the supernatural.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Haunting Family History of Osgood Perkins

• [00:46–06:30]
  • Heidi introduces Osgood Perkins as the son of Anthony Perkins (Psycho’s Norman Bates).
  • Anthony Perkins’ biography: his rise to Hollywood fame, the burden of queer identity in an intolerant era, and his family’s web of secrets.
  • Anthony’s "double life":
    • Outwardly a Hollywood icon, inwardly a man concealing his sexuality.
    • Longtime platonic cohabitation with Helen Merrill as cover, later meeting and marrying Bari Berenson.
  • Osgood's childhood:
    • Acting with his father at age nine in Psycho II, leaving a lasting impression of familiarity turning to horror.
    • Anthony’s battle with AIDS, diagnosed after hospital staff leaked his status ([09:30]).

“Anthony found out from the tabloids that he was HIV positive. When he went to confirm the diagnosis, he was tested for AIDS, and that test came back positive. Anthony only told one person: Barry.”
— Heidi Wong [09:35]

• [11:46–13:30]
  • After Anthony’s death, Osgood is left with a legacy of questions and hidden truths — themes that would later haunt his creative work.

2. Infamous True Crime: The JonBenet Ramsey Murder

• [13:30–16:40]
  • Osgood’s inspiration came partly from the 1996 unsolved murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey:
    • The eerie detail of a realistic "My Twin" doll, made to look exactly like JonBenet, stored just feet from where her body was found.
    • The haunting power of representation: the doll as an inadvertent omen or sympathetic object.

“There’s one thing everyone seems to remember the most about JonBenet Ramsey. She was a six year old beauty pageant queen... For Christmas of 1996, Patsy wanted to give her daughter something special. So she ordered a custom doll... It was just a doll. JonBenet was upstairs, alive and well. Within 24 hours that image would become real.”
— Heidi Wong [15:10]

• The concept’s relation to “sympathetic magic” and voodoo dolls — the notion that harming an effigy harms the person.

“It’s the idea that if you create an object that represents someone, whatever you do to that object will somehow affect the person that it represents.”
— Heidi Wong [17:05]

3. Art Imitates Life: Processing Family Secrets Through Film

• [17:40–21:15]
  • Osgood Perkins weaves autobiographical elements into his horror films, particularly the theme of parental secrets.
  • Explores the question: "What secrets should and shouldn't a parent keep from their kids?"
  • His directorial journey:
    • The Blackcoat’s Daughter — abandonment and mysterious parents.
    • I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House — memory, loss, and the impossibility of knowing parents after they're gone.

“It was about how we want to know who our parents are, and sometimes we don’t get the desire until they’re gone. It can be impossible to learn who someone is when they’re not around anymore.”
— Heidi Wong quoting Osgood Perkins [20:45]

• Tragedy deepens when Osgood's mother, Bari Berenson, dies in the 9/11 attacks, leaving him parentless at 27 ([22:00]).

4. The Supernatural Thread: Psychic Ancestry and Maternal Sacrifice

• [23:30–25:30]
  • Bari Berenson, Osgood’s mother, allegedly descended from psychics, a legacy echoed in Long Legs.
  • In the film, FBI agent Lee Harker discovers her mother’s own dark secrets and complicity — paralleling Osgood’s questioning of parental protection and truth.

“He wanted to make a movie about how a mother could lie to her child and still believe that she was doing the right thing.”
— Heidi Wong [25:00]

• The fictional Ruth, like Barry in life, hides painful secrets believing it's for her child's protection.

5. The Central Ethical Question

• The episode closes on the film’s moral ambiguity:
  • Does hiding darkness protect loved ones, or cause greater harm?
  • Would Osgood’s mother have empathized with Ruth’s actions in Long Legs?

“Is that true? Did Lee’s mother do what she had to do to protect her child? Or did she go too far?”
— Heidi Wong [26:34]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the interplay of personal and fictional horror:

  “Writer director Osgood Perkins actually drew from his real life to create Long Legs, taking his family's secrets and weaving them into a psychological horror story, which, in my opinion, is what a real artist does...”
  — Heidi Wong [02:50]

• On the JonBenet Ramsey doll and sympathetic magic:

  “When Osgood Perkins heard that detail about the doll, it stopped him cold. It was one of the creepiest, most haunting things he'd ever read.”
  — Heidi Wong [15:35]

• On parental secrets and the impossibility of knowing:

  “We want to know who our parents are, and sometimes we don’t get the desire until they’re gone.”
  — Osgood Perkins, via Heidi Wong [20:45]

Important Timestamps

• 00:46: Heidi Wong introduces the Long Legs case and its real-life roots.
• 03:30: Anthony Perkins’ secret life and its effect on the Perkins family.
• 09:30: The revelation of Anthony Perkins’ AIDS diagnosis.
• 11:46: Osgood Perkins begins to confront family secrets following his father’s death.
• 13:30: The JonBenet Ramsey case and the significance of the "My Twin" doll.
• 17:05: Introduction of sympathetic magic as an inspiration.
• 20:45: Quotes from Osgood Perkins about parental mystery.
• 21:15: Loss of Osgood’s mother in the September 11 attacks.
• 25:00: How maternal secrecy and sacrifice manifest in Long Legs.
• 26:34: The episode’s central moral question.

Summary & Reflection

Heidi Wong’s narrative fuses familial trauma, real-life crime, folklore, and myth into a gripping look at how true horror stories are often rooted in tragic realities. The Perkins family’s story, the Ramsey case, and the psychology of secrets converge in Osgood Perkins’ Long Legs, a movie that’s as much about inherited darkness as it is about serial killers and dolls.
The episode asks: Can secrecy and protection ever truly shield us from harm? Or does the real horror lurk within the truths left unsaid?

“There’s no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it.”
— Heidi Wong [26:55]

[End of Summary]