Jake Lacy in Friend of the Family, Story of Jan Broberg – The Hollywood Reporter

in the peacock One Family friend, Jake Lacy plays Bob “B” Berchtold, a man who befriends a Mormon family in the Midwest in the 1970s, only to kidnap their young daughter Jan not once but twice. It would be an unbelievable story if it weren’t true: Jan Broberg’s story was previously captured in the 2017 documentary Kidnapped right in front of your eyes.

For Lacy, playing a kidnapper and pedophile was an emotional challenge for the actor, especially given the age of the victim: Jan 12 and 14 when she was kidnapped. Hendrix Yancey, now 11, and Mckenna Grace, 16, play Jan at different ages, while the real Jan Broberg and her mother, Mary Ann, are often on set as they act as producers. for limited series.

“It was selfless when they said, ‘We want this story to be told so people understand what grooming, coercion and manipulation is,’” Lacy recounts. CHEAP about receiving the Brobergs’ blessing. “And understand that we didn’t go to 1985 and this has stopped. It is still common today, and it often happens at the hands of someone you know, love, and trust. That’s why it’s extremely difficult to talk about and prosecute.”

The film begins with the real Jan Broberg sitting in a chair, introducing herself and telling what happened to her.

There are two purposes in doing that. One is to let everyone know Jan is fine. The story doesn’t end with Jan dying or disappearing. Here she is, she’s vibrant and alive, which I think gets people’s attention a little bit more into the story than the utterly horrifying thought, “I’m watching the story this kid isn’t filming.” come back?” Also, it’s almost unbelievable, unless someone says, “This happened.”

Do you feel nervous taking on such a cruel role?

No. This is not a voyeuristic look at their lives or some tabloid version of a story. We wanted to be authentic and empathetic to the experience inside this family, within this community when this wonderful young woman was arrested. … In the end, saving grace for me, and for the production, is that there is a real purpose in telling this story: Let’s shed light on being a victim of both childhood sexual abuse, but as well as a family and the people around it, and what it’s like when you’re manipulated, triggered and coerced by a predator, and how difficult it is to make decisions that from the outside it’s easy to say, “That’s a red flag, why did they do it?” But from within the experience, you feel cornered, trapped and alone. to get what he wants, and he’s very good at it.

What kind of research has gone into this?

Jan is amazing when he says, “I’m free.” And I kept my distance from her, partly out of fear and partly out of the need to create this silo where I had no emotional connection with the real-life Jan Broberg, because Robert Berchtold was obsessed. by Jan, but an emotionless person. It was hard to come up with this and find a way to play this role and then also have a personal friendship with Jan. I thought, “I can’t balance those things,” and I was wrong. She reached out and left me this wonderful letter on the first day of filming, and I think she knew that I was hesitant to contact her. The letter describes a bit about how warm, charismatic, funny, and kind Berchtold is, and how he blends into his family and earns their trust and how he achieves what he wants. would like. And the second half of the letter reads like, “I’m fine, I’m in a healthy place, and I’m so glad you’re doing this, and that you’re allowed to take on this role and tell this story as a person. the way you see fit without worry. The level of kindness and compassion that someone has for me, who is just a dumb actress playing this role, when she’s the one who’s actually going through it, is beyond my understanding. And from there, I was still at a creative distance to stay in the illusory orbit of Berchtold herself, but whenever she was on set, we would have lunch together and talk. Turns out it’s possible to have grace and friendship with her, and also tell this story.

It was a wise decision to not show any intimate scenes between Jan and B, but there were still a lot of uncomfortable scenes. How did you and the two actresses playing Jan establish a safe space?

Jan got involved creatively and creator Nick Antosca really hit it [that] we don’t show abuse, we don’t cast an 18-year-old actor and then expect them to look 14, and then do these scenes. He said, “I have no interest in creating that thing and bringing that thing into the world.” … A long part of this story is Brobergs feeling something terrible is happening and we don’t know what it is. The audience also experienced: “There is something terribly wrong here.” So it works in our favor, creatively and like humans, to say, “We don’t do that.” The production and also the producers on the set actually [went] their way of creating this safe, supportive environment, between having a therapist on set, along with changing the scenarios that minors have so that any mention of things of a sexual nature were either removed or rewritten. An example is, for example, there is a book that B has placed in the mobile home, and it the pleasure of sex, and Jan found it. But when we were filming with Hendrix, the book we used was titled People From Another Planet. Even the props there were unlikely to create trauma for a young person in this environment. And then we come back with a double hand and get an extra of the actual book. … In the end, there were only two people, so before and after each shoot, I was very humble, such as “Are you good?”

Are there scenes that are more difficult to shoot than others?

That’s where we put a trampoline at home and while driving to school I said, “Never mind my boys, they’re tired of jumping around,” very gently. all these little bread crumbs to make Jan think her idea was to spend the night at home. … And that was the first time we actually went, filming wisely, from the way he drew family into friends. The whole scene takes place in a kitchen, in the dark; it is very quiet and intimate. It’s the three of us — Lio [Tipton, who plays B’s wife, Gail] and Hendrix and I — in this family portrait, except this girl has just been sexually abused. That, for me, was horrible.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in the November 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to sign up.