Exclusive Interview: In Conversation with Director and Co-Showrunner Derek Doneen, Netflix’s ‘Heist’

Heist films are one of my favourite subgenres of heists, so when writer Arpit Nayak had heard about the new Netflix docuseries “Heist,” highlighting three exciting real-life heists over six episodes (each heist with their own two parts), I was super excited about his idea to speak with someone involved with the project. The series itself is so entertaining, especially the structures of the episodes and how the stories unpack; from the planning to execution.

For “Heist” and on this episode of “The Movie Buff Show,” staff writers Daniel Prinn (myself) and Arpit Nayak were able to speak with one of the showrunners of the series, Derek Doneen, who also has executive producer credit throughout the series. He directs the series’ first heist story in the first two episodes titled “Sex Magick, Money, Murder Part 1 & Part 2.”

Arpit and I have been doing some exciting interviews with filmmakers over the past little while. This will be the first of our conversations that will be released; we’re planning to post the other conversations in these coming weeks. On this interview, we touch on telling true crime in a different way, some of the research process, casting over Zoom, Derek’s role as director, EP and showrunner, some of the challenges while making the series, having a project like this on Netflix and hoping to get a second season for the series.

There’s more in the interview (where I had some technical difficulties we were able to edit around), and you can watch the conversation below on our official YouTube channel! As well, the first season of “Heist” is available to stream on Netflix with an account, and you can find the series’ page here.