![]() ![]() And when you have someone who is willing to share that much of their life, you want to do it justice. The drive to tell it was because of Jan and Mary Ann. I don’t think I fully knew what I was getting into in the complexity of this story. Working with Colin Hanks, Anna Paquin, and Jake Lacy, all of the ingredients were really wonderful. I’m a huge fan of Nick Antosca and Eliza Hittman. The first thing that always draws me in is the people attached. They spoke to the Cut about their role as Gail, how coming out as nonbinary affected their work, and what it was like working on a necessarily serious set. Tipton never really wanted to be a model - they were playing the long game and still are, in a Hollywood that hasn’t always been welcoming. It’s the latest role in a steadily growing acting career they embarked upon almost as soon as they left America’s Next Top Model, on which they were a contestant in 2008. Alongside him, as Berchtold’s wife, Gail, is Lio Tipton, whose performance immediately captivates - Gail is a complex character with conflicting behaviors, a contradiction Tipton is able to embody skillfully, vacillating from tearfully vulnerable to closed off and reticent. “Nick and Jan’s intention, or reason for telling it in this format, is to say, ‘I want to show you what it’s like when you are inside a family, a community, a friendship that is the result of grooming,’” said Jake Lacy, who stars as Robert Berchtold. Instead, it focuses on understanding what grooming is and what it can look like. The show doesn’t include any graphic depictions of violence or abuse. It’s an upsetting watch, and many of its viewers came away in disbelief, asking, “How the hell did the parents allow this to happen?” In A Friend of the Family - for which Jan and Mary Ann Broberg were executive producers - that question is fully explored. Narratively, creatively, and in its production, it deviates immensely from what we’ve come to expect.Ī Friend of the Family tells the story of the Broberg family, and if you recognize that name, it’s because the double kidnapping of their daughter, Jan Broberg, by neighbor and family friend Robert Berchtold, was already depicted in a Netflix documentary, Abducted in Plain Sight. ![]() This is only a true-crime show in the sense that it tells the true story of a family that was the victim of horrific crimes. ![]() So if you watched the trailer for Peacock’s A Friend of the Family and released a deep sigh or an eye roll, I get that. It’s been noted that true-crime series often are made without input or even consent from the real people affected by the crime, a conversation that has been reignited by a certain new series on Netflix. The barrage of true-crime podcasts, documentaries, and TV shows in recent years has resulted in an understandable level of cultural exhaustion with the genre, as well as extremely valid critiques of it. Lio Tipton as Gail Berchtold in A Friend of the Family. ![]()
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