MTV’s ‘True Life Crime’ host Dometi Pongo talks to Daily News about breaking the mold
Original source: New York Daily News
I want my, I want my, I want my true-life crime.
Shows on real legal cases are everywhere these days, even on a most unlikely outlet, MTV.
The host of “True Life Crime” on the network that begin as a home for music videos says that channel’s entry into the fray is not just a broken record in the crowded crime competition.
“The main thing that this show brings that I don’t see in other crime shows as often is a focus on elevating the voices of marginalized [people],” host Dometi Pongo, 30, told the Daily News earlier this month. “People that society has forgotten about, or that society, for whatever reason, hasn’t covered their stories with the same level of attention and detail and care that we do for stories that appeal to the general market. ... In fact, you know, you wouldn’t think that stories this heavy on a network like ours would even be as successful as this.”
A spin-off of the network’s “True Life” docuseries — which originally ran from 1998 to 2017 and followed people dealing with everything from addiction, debt, life as a sugar baby or having parents in the porn industry — this incarnation premiered last month and explores crimes against predominantly marginalized teens and 20-somethings.
This niche has always attracted Pongo, a first-generation American born in Chicago to Ghanaian parents, who kicked off his career at WVON, an African-American-owned radio station formerly utilized by Martin Luther King Jr.
“That’s how steeped that station is in history,” said Pongo, who worked his way up from intern to news director and would find himself thinking, “Does the rest of the world care about the stories that I care so deeply about?”
Investigating the disappearance and murder of 21-year-old Indigenous woman, Hanna Harris, “True Life Crime” host Dometi Pongo, center, reflects with Harris’ sister, Rose Harris, left, and mother Malinda Limberhand. (Courtesy of MTV)
Pongo’s personal connection to certain cases helps him determine, along with MTV’s production team, which stories the series will cover.
For instance, both Pongo and Kenneka Jenkins, the teen at the center of the series’ premiere, hailed from Chicago.
It wasn’t the Ghanaian roots shared with Mujey Dumbuya that “really tormented” Pongo when covering the teen’s case for the fifth episode, but the multiple rapes she endured.
“I learned a lot about how sexual assault may impact the psyche of the victim, and the feeling of hopelessness,” he explained to The News. "And I thought it was even more harrowing because the ... family was so conservative ... that they don’t even use the word ‘rape.’
“They would say, ‘This thing was done to her;’ ‘This thing happened;’ ‘This incident...’” Pongo recalled, noting the vague language left authorities uncertain of the gravity. “That story really messed me up. But all of them messed me up deeply in different ways. ... Every single case hits differently.”
The eighth and final episode of the first season airs Wednesday and focuses on the 2013 disappearance of mother and indigenous woman, Hanna Harris, a 21-year-old member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.
Like many of the featured cases, Harris’ has already been solved, which will likely satisfy audiences but creates a slight complication for Pongo.
“[With solved cases] you have to be delicate in guiding the viewer through the timeline of events in real time, even though by the time it airs, these things are public,” he said, noting that unsolved cases make it easier to “take the viewer down the rabbit hole."
If the show renewed for Season 2, Pongo already has potential cases in mind, starting with Sandra Bland and Kendrick Johnson.
Pongo would love to “see what really happened” with Bland, the 28-year-old African-American woman found dead in her jail cell just days after a traffic stop arrest, and many fans have requested coverage of 18-year-old Johnson, whose body was found in a rolled-up gym mat with his organs missing.
“I don’t think anything is off the table," Pongo said. “I think first and foremost ... we’re thinking about what we can do to elevate conversations that need to happen. So anything that allows us to do some good and give some folks some closure.”
