Elizabeth Smart on Her Lifetime Movie: ‘I Never Want to Watch It Again’

Elizabeth Smart has never shied away from the trauma she faced at fourteen years old. This weekend, she faced it in a whole new way, by watching I Am Elizabeth Smart — the movie she produced and narrated about her abduction.

Smart told E! News that, despite working heavily on the film, and having an intimate knowledge of the script and events, it was hard for her to watch.

“I never want to watch it again,” Smart said. “That’s how good it was.”

Smart is 30 years old now, and she works as a victims’ rights advocate. She’s married with two kids of her own. Her lifestyle is built around acknowledging the trauma she faced rather than hiding from it, yet that couldn’t stop the movie from reaching her in a profound way.

“I had been over the script probably about 100 times…then I narrate a lot of it, so I had seen a lot of the difference pieces, and then finally watching the whole thing come together in one format, it was terrifying,” she said.

Smart added that she had watched the movie alone, against her better judgment. She told E! News that her husband was downstairs with their children when the movie aired on Saturday, and Smart considered turning off the TV.

“I kept thinking, ‘I don’t have to watch this right now! I don’t want to watch this! I’m just going to put it away.’ Then I said, ‘No, I have to watch it. I have to know how it turns out,’ just because it was so accurate. It was terrifying and so intense and part of me was like I don’t know if I want to feel all of these emotions again,” Smart recalled.

Smart was abducted by religious extremists in 2002, and held captive for nine months in inhumane conditions. The movie tells the story of how she facilitated her escape.