Nile Jarvis shares more than a few passing traits with Bob Durst. On the series, Jarvis is the son of a New York City real estate tycoon Martin Jarvis, played by Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks. In the series, Martin runs Jarvis Industries, a massive real estate conglomerate that owns multiple skyscrapers in New York City and is under attack from a progressive political candidate calling out Jarvis Industries for monopolizing the city.
In reality, Durst was also the heir of a New York–based real estate dynasty. His grandfather, Jewish tailor Joseph Durst, emigrated to the US in 1902 from what is now Poland and founded the commercial and residential real estate company The Durst Organization in 1927. Joseph proceeded to purchase commercial buildings and skyscrapers across Manhattan. Robert Durst’s father, Seymour Bernard Durst, inherited the company in 1974 and helped grow it into a multimillion-dollar organization. According to Forbes, the Durst family’s real estate holdings were estimated to be worth more than $8 billion in 2020; as the eldest son, Robert Durst was once expected to inherit the throne and run the company.
Robert Durst appears in court during opening statements in his murder trial on March 4, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.Etienne Laurent -Pool/Getty Images)
This would never come to pass. Born in 1943, Robert Durst had a turbulent childhood in Scarsdale, NY, despite—or perhaps because of—his immense wealth. When he was seven years old, Robert’s mother, Bernice Herstein, died after either falling or jumping off the roof of their Scarsdale home. Robert would later claim that he witnessed his mother commit suicide, having been brought to the window by his own father to watch it happen. (In a 2015 New York Times interview, Robert’s younger brother, Douglas, denied that ever happened). A psychiatric report of Robert at age 10 mentioned the possibility that Robert might suffer from “personality decomposition and possibly even schizophrenia.” In 1992, Seymour ultimately chose Douglas to run the company, due to his eldest son’s erratic behavior—exacerbating a rift that already existed between Robert and his family.
On The Beast in Me, Nile Jarvis also has a fraught relationship with both his real estate mogul father, Marvin, and his extended family. Unlike Durst, whose father passed him over for the top job in favor of his younger brother, Nile considers himself the brains of the family business. “For all his kicking and screaming, I pulled my father into the future,” he says in episode three. “Got him to take a couple of big swings and grew the business tenfold.” But according to Jarvis, his father Marvin was a self-made man who “shoveled cow shit before school”—making him more like Durst’s paternal grandfather, Joseph, who emigrated to the US with just $3 in his pocket before amassing his fortune.
