‘A Friend Of The Family’ Team On Creating A Safe Environment On Set & The Importance Of Telling Difficult Stories – Contenders TV
deadline.comA Friend of the Family showrunner-creator Nick Antosca, stars Lio Tipton and Colin Hanks and activist and producer Jan Broberg, on whose life the series is based, joined Deadline’s Contenders Television to spotlight sexual-abuse awareness.
The Peacock true-crime drama series follows Robert Berchtold (Jake Lacy), a serial child kidnapper. After becoming close friends with the Broberg family, Berchtold kidnaps their daughter Jan (played by both Mckenna Grace and Hendrix Yancey) twice within the span of two years.
Anna Paquin, Austin Stowell and Patrick Fischler also star. During the panel, Broberg, whose harrowing life experience has been recounted multiple times across books and documentaries, made a passionate statement regarding the importance of the serialized drama series. “I’ve been telling my story for 30 years, never on purpose, never thinking this would happen, but just because I knew that by telling our stories, maybe we could help future children not experience this,” she said. RELATED: Deadline Studio At Contenders Television 2023 – Steven Yeun, Ali Wong, Dominique Fishback, Riley Keough, Natasha Lyonne & More Broberg went on to detail the staggering statistic that 1 in 4 people will experience sexual abuse before they mature into adulthood.
Tipton, who plays Robert’s wife Gail Berchtold, attested that her own experience with sexual assault fueled her desire to play the complicated role. “Reading [the script] and being able to relate to it in such a personal way, then having to take a step back and truly have to take my own experience and learn from this material that I have in front of me and someone’s own personal experience in such an intimate way, it’s miserable, but you don’t get many chances [to
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