How accurate is Netflix's 'Unabomber' movie? A real FBI agent on the case weighs in.

Shailene Woodley in "Unabomber." Philippe Bosse/Netflix The Netflix movie "Unabomber" looks at the life of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and how he was captured. Shailene Woodley plays an FBI agent hot on his trail. Retired FBI agent James R. Fitzgerald, who helped bring down the Unabomber, tells Business Insider what the movie got right and what it got wrong. Ted Kaczynski's decades-long acts of domestic terrorism that led to him being known as the Unabomber have been chronicled in books, documentaries, plays, and movies for years. Now Netflix is taking its swing. In the streaming giant's original movie "Unabomber," the story splits between a young Kaczynski (played by Jacob Tremblay) as a test subject during his time at Harvard by a professor he idolizes (Russell Crowe), and the FBI investigation that inevitably ended with him being captured in a small cabin in Montana in 1996. Kaczynski pleaded guilty in 1998 to 13 federal counts of bomb attacks, for which he was given multiple life sentences. He died by suicide in 2023. As the "Unabomber" movie shows, linguistics, the study of human language, was a major factor in revealing that Kaczynski was the Unabomber and bringing him to justice. Shailene Woodley plays Joanne Miller, a fiery FBI agent whose obsessive study of the Unabomber's 35,000-word manifesto, which was published by The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995, leads her to discover the Unabomber's true identity. Though the Miller character is fictitious, she seems to be based heavily on FBI profiler James R. Fitzgerald, who became the lead on linguistics for the Unabomber Task Force in 1995 after discovering a hidden message in one of Kaczynski's letters. In "Unabomber," Miller's actions, like suggesting the UTF investigate the Sylvan Learning Center, which is mentioned in the manifesto, and matching old Kaczynski writings to the manifesto, are all things Fitzgerald did during the real investigation. Fitzgerald says he was never contacted by the "Unabomber" production. Fitzgerald has written a book about his experience hunting down the Unabomber, and in the 2017 Discovery Channel miniseries "Manhunt: Unabomber," he was portrayed by Sam Worthington. (Fitzgerald was also a consulting producer on that show.) Fitzgerald said he doesn't take offense to creative license, admitting that "Manhunt: Unabomber" also got some things wrong, but he felt there were problems with the Netflix movie beyond the Miller character. In response to a request for comment on Fitzgerald's perspective, a Netflix spokesperson told Business Insider that the Miller character isn't based on a specific person. Here, Fitzgerald breaks down what is accurate and what isn't in "Unabomber." The opening surveillance scene really happened — sort of Shailene Woodley plays Joanne Miller in "Unabomber." Netflix "Unabomber" opens with Miller as part of a surveillance team in San Francisco, hoping to catch the Unabomber while he buys a copy of The Washington Post, which has printed his entire manifesto. A suspicious man in a hood buys a handful of newspapers, then runs away when Miller and another FBI agent follow. They ultimately catch him at his house and then let him go after searching it and finding nothing that would make him a suspect in the Unabomber case. Fitzgerald said the surveillance was accurate, but that was the extent of the truth in this scene. "They said in the movie, 'We chose The Washington Post because nobody in San Francisco reads it,' but we chose the Post in reality because only two stores sold The Washington Post in the San Francisco Bay area, so it made it easier to do surveillance," said Fitzgerland. "During that entire surveillance, there was no foot chase, no gun play, no guy running buying a bunch of copies, nothing like that," he said, going against what is shown in the scene. No FBI agent ever called the Unabomber hotline The Unabomber Task Force office was never empty, said Fitzgerald. Netflix Later in the movie, Miller is seen alone in the Unabomber Task Force's offices answering the hotline. On the other end is an FBI agent with a tip. Fitzgerald said that would never happen. "Agents aren't calling the line," he said. "It would be a teletype or an inside phone they would call. And the tipline phone was manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The real UTF was a beehive of activity."  Ted Kaczynski's brother, David, was a major help to the FBI's manhunt, as the movie depicts Matthew Kevin Anderson plays David Kaczynski in "Unabomber." Netflix Ted's younger brother, David, is shown in the movie as a reluctant source for the UTF. He provided the team with materials written by Ted, which would inevitably lead the FBI to discover that Ted was the Unabomber. "David turned over to the UTF a 23-page document that he was hoping we would rule his brother out as the author of the manifesto," Fitzgerald said. "In 'Unabomber,' Miller is given a document by David, she looks at it and then says, 'I