On this nine-episode restricted sequence, which streams on Peacock, Lacy performs Robert Berchtold, an Idaho husband and father who within the mid-Seventies twice kidnapped Jan Broberg, the eldest daughter of a household that he had recognized for years. (This case was beforehand explored within the Netflix documentary “Kidnapped in Plain Sight.”) Because the present tells it, and as Broberg confirmed in a current interview, Berchtold, or B as these near him knew him, used his smile, his jokes, his nice charisma to insinuate himself with the Brobergs. The 2 households had been so enmeshed that when Jan was first taken, her dad and mom delayed contacting the FBI.
(Following the primary abduction, Berchtold was convicted of kidnapping. Sentenced to 5 years, he served simply 45 days. After the second, he averted jail fully, serving 5 months in a psychiatric facility as a substitute. In 2005, having been discovered responsible of aggravated assault and possession of a firearm for a later offense, he dedicated suicide.)
Many of the episodes of “A Pal of the Household” had been written earlier than casting started. Discovering the best Berchtold was significantly daunting, as a result of the actor wanted to undertaking an uncanny attraction.
“He needed to have a pure charisma that might come by means of the display screen and drop into the lounge of whoever was watching the present,” mentioned Broberg, who’s a producer on the sequence. As a result of charisma, she continued, was “B’s superpower.” And but, that very same actor would additionally must journey to some very darkish locations.
Nick Antosca (“The Act,” “Sweet”), the showrunner on “A Pal of the Household,” had been impressed by Lacy’s activate “The White Lotus” and the sympathy that he dropped at such an disagreeable character. An viewers isn’t meant to sympathize with B, Antosca clarified. “However it’s important to perceive how that household fell in love with him,” he mentioned.
B doesn’t consider himself as a monster, although — inarguably — he’s one. Antosca suspected Lacy would be capable to play each features directly.