It was of the utmost importance to A Friend of the Family star Jake Lacy that Jan Broberg and Mary Ann Broberg were involved in telling their own story in Peacock’s disturbing new true-crime drama. Lacy portrays predator Bob “B” Berchtold in the series, which tells the story of how Jan was abducted twice as a child in the ’70s by a close family friend and brainwashed into believing she would have to have sex with him to save her family.
“I don’t think I would’ve wanted to be a part of this if Jan and Mary Anne weren’t involved [as producers], because the story is their story and is so sensitive and difficult and needs to be handled in a certain way,” Lacy told PopCulture.com. The White Lotus actor then revealed Jan left him a note on the first day of filming where she talked about Berchtold’s “warmth and charisma and generosity,” how “he could cry at the drop of a hat” and how his “ability to make you feel so special and seen was his superpower.”
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“And then, the second half of the letter was saying, ‘Go for it,’” he continued. “She was saying, ‘I’m in a healthy place, and you don’t have to be worried about doing your absolute best to create this horrific thing and then also being concerned about the effect it’s having on me.’ And she was like, ‘I will take care of me, and you can take care of your job here.’”
“I was at the time, and still, in awe of that level of grace just on a human level to offer that to somebody, considering what she has gone through and spent her life doing,” Lacy told PopCulture. It was with that permission that The Office alum was able to dive deep into the “ever-changing, ever-evolving entity” that was Berchtold. “His own wants and needs and rationale and reality shift with his moods and wants and needs,” Lacy said of Berchtold, who died by suicide in 2005. “It’s very difficult to pin him down emotionally or strategically.”
Jan told PopCulture she wanted to write those letters to the cast, which also includes Colin Hanks, Anna Paquin, Lio Tipton, McKenna Grace and Hendrix Yancey, to “give them the license to bring their A-game” as actors. Fielding texts and calls from the cast was not unusual throughout filming for Jan. Hanks, who plays Jan’s father, Bob Broberg, wanted to know what his real-life counterpart would be playing on the piano in the morning; Paquin wanted to meet the real Mary Ann Broberg over FaceTime. Grace, who plays the older version of Jan, even read through her old diary entries and letters between a young Jan and B, she told PopCulture.
“They were as lovely as they could be, and I was able to share what I could,” Jan explained. “But they brought so much richness to every single character that I was 100% happy.” Watching the series back, Jan said she is “so full of gratitude” to have the “full story” be told in a way that people can really understand what happened. “Even though my story’s a little crazy, it’s real people, real families, and the abuser or the predator or the groomer is either in the family or close to the family, and you just don’t see it,” she shared. “So I wanted to expose this kind of psychology, this kind of manipulation, and I think this series does that. I’m so happy about it.” The first four episodes of A Friend of the Family premiere on Oct. 6 on Peacock, with new episodes then dropping weekly.
