SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the documentary “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish,” now streaming on Netflix.
Netflix’s documentary “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” — currently No. 1 on the streamer’s Top 10 movies — tells the disturbing story of Lauryn Licari, a teenage girl, and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, who, in 2020, after only a few months of dating, started receiving harassing text messages from an unknown caller.
“Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you,” one text read. That was followed by, “He no longer likes you and hasn’t liked you for a while. It’s obvious he wants me.”
The teenage couple, who attended a small high school in Beal City, Mich., were cyberbullied on and off for close to two years. At one point, 40 to 50 aggressive and menacing texts were being sent each day. Even after they broke up, both Licari and McKenney continued to receive vicious text messages from their harasser. At one point, the stalker, who pretended to be another classmate who liked McKenney, told Licari that she should kill herself.
The local police — who were contacted by Licari’s and McKenny’s parents — began interrogating their fellow schoolmates, as well as McKenny’s cousin, up-ending their lives. Eventually, the FBI got involved, and soon discovered that the culprit didn’t go to high school in Beal City. The cyberbully wasn’t even a teenager. The perpetrator behind the nonstop harassment and physical threats was Lauryn’s own mother, Kendra Licari.
Kendra and Lauryn Licari
Courtesy of Netflix
The documentary — based on Lauren Smiley’s New York Magazine story from January “Who Was Cyberbullying Kendra Licari’s Teen Daughter?” — is set up like a mystery, with the revelation that it was Lauryn Licari’s own mother who was torturing her coming like a gut punch. Bodycam footage shown in “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” captures Kendra being told she’s been caught, and watching her world fall apart in real time is like watching a car crash.
Variety spoke to “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” director Skye Borgman, who most recently directed Netflix’s “Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser.”
You had incredible access to a large pool of people involved in this case, including Lauryn and Owen, their classmates, Owen’s parents, the police, FBI agents who worked on the case, and even Kendra Licari, who was released from prison in August 2024 after serving a 16-month sentence. Was it challenging to convince them all to be part of this doc, and why do you think they agreed to be in it?
Everyone we talked to had such big feelings about this story. It was very immediate for them, and it was very raw. So, asking them to sit down and talk to us was really a matter of me gaining their trust and understanding why it was that they wanted to tell their story. For the most part, people just wanted to be heard, and they felt that this was an important story to tell because of the cyberbullying element. It was incredibly traumatizing to everybody involved.
Courtesy of Netflix
You showed some of the texts that were sent, but how many did you go through during pre-production?
There were like 350 pages with multiple text messages on every page. Kendra and [Owen’s mom] Jill would print them out and hand them off to law enforcement. So, there were thousands and thousands of texts that we went through.
During your interview with Kendra, she seemed remorseful, but did you ever feel like she was putting on an act?
Kendra is a little bit of an enigma. I think that she had a lot of time to think about what she did. She was in therapy when she was incarcerated, and I believe that she’s still seeing a therapist. She has put thought into what she did. I don’t know that she’s fully realized or recognized what it was that she did or why she did it. I guess only Kendra could really answer that.
I would never want to show my face again if I were her. Why do you think she sat down for your cameras?
She was nervous about going on camera, because just sitting down and telling your story is a nerve-racking thing sometimes. But she was so great, and she actually ended up really loving the experience. At the end of it, she said it was kind of fun. She laughed about things, and I think it was really an opportunity for her to think about things a little bit more in depth. Every time I would ask a question, she would really have to think about some things, and I think that was really good for her.
You set up the doc so that at the beginning of the film, when Kendra is being interviewed, the audience has no idea that she is the culprit. She seems like a mother who went through hell. And then about halfway through the film, there’s the twist. Was it always the plan to make her seem innocent and then make the reveal?
It was really based on her interview. We sat down and talked with her, and because of the way that she conducted herself in the interview and because of what we knew and what we had come to find out in the story, we felt that it was pretty accurate to include her the way we did before we revealed that it was her who committed the cyberstalking.
The bodycam footage of Kendra being told by the cops that she had been caught, and then her having to tell her daughter and husband, was gutwrenching. Did you know that footage existed when you started making this doc?
We worked with law enforcement and the prosecutor to get access to that footage, which is so telling. When we first were cutting the film, we just played the entire body cam footage for its entire duration. We couldn’t stop watching it. We were deeply invested in watching it play out. Ultimately, we realized we couldn’t play it for 20 minutes.
You also directed “Abducted in Plain Sight,” which had its fair share of twists and turns. Did making “Unknown Number” remind you of “Abducted in Plain Sight”?
In all of these stories, from “Abducted in Plain Sight” to “Unknown Number,” it’s the way people behave and what drives them to such behaviors that is probably one of the more interesting aspects of each story. There are a lot of jaw-dropping moments, but to me, really, it’s the people’s behavior. That’s what makes it so fascinating.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
