Jake Lacy on moment he was “really uncomfortable” playing Robert Berchtold

Robert ‘B.’ Berchtold was a difficult character for Jake Lacy to play. Given how the real predator manipulated the Broberg family to groom, sexually abuse, and kidnap actor Jan Broberg as a child between 1972 and 1976, this may not seem surprising.

The actor told Newsweek what it was like to slip on the mask of the pedophile for Peacock‘s true crime drama A Friend of the Family. Speaking over Zoom, Lacy talked about how he was always keen to leave the character behind once the cameras cut out because it was “not a spot that you want to live in, in real life.”

There were several moments in which he felt “uncomfortable” playing Berchtold, but one, in particular, stood out in the actor’s memory.

Jake Lacy on Moment He Was ‘Really Uncomfortable’ Playing Robert Berchtold

In real life, Berchtold made himself out to be the perfect family friend to Mary Ann and Bob Broberg (played by Anna Paquin and Colin Hanks) in order to target Jan (Mckenna Grace), even going so far as to have sexual relationships with both of Jan’s parents.

Lacy explained that to play Berchtold, he had to understand the mindset the real man was in and how he would perform “being a good guy” as a means of serving his own interests. But that mask would fall every time Berchtold was close to achieving his goal, according to Lacy.

“He’s kind of calling cut in his own life like, ‘okay, that moment’s done, I can go back to the shark that I am, and not pose as this ho-hum neighbor,'” Lacy said.

While on set, Lacy tried to “give over to the same fantasy or story that Berchtold is telling himself,” saying that the abuser saw himself as “Steve McQueen, that he’s Danny Ocean pulling off a heist.”

“So it was, as it should be for Berchtold, fun and fulfilling and a dangerous, sexy caper because for him that is the reality,” Lacy explained. “And then you see that cut against the impact he’s having on this family and that juxtaposition creates this tension against one another. Given that, it was sort of easy to leave the day behind because it was creatively fulfilling.”

Lacy’s co-stars Paquin and Hanks were good models for him when it came to shedding the character of Berchtold after a day’s shoot, as they were able to do the same with their roles as Jan Broberg’s parents.

“They organically figured it out: ‘shut it down, leave this behind and then come into work and get my hair and make-up, the wardrobe and then flick the lights back on and go for it, and then shut it back down again,'” he said.

“I’m playing a guy who thinks he’s Steve McQueen there for six months as we film this, living in some kind of make-believe alternate reality of ‘our daughter has been taken by a sexual predator, we don’t know where she is.’ It’s not a spot that you want to live in, obviously, in real life, but also to pretend. It’s not pleasant.”

Although the show’s subject matter was dark, it wasn’t on set that Lacy felt the weight of playing a person like Berchtold the most—it was much later in the process.

“It was really at the first screening where I saw the first episode,” Lacy reflected. “I hadn’t seen anything cut together. That was the most uncomfortable in the whole process because my character does not feel guilt and shame for the things he’s doing. I sort of built a framework of how to not feel guilt and shame throughout the filming of this thing so there’s a certain ease in that,” he added.

“But then to see it, to be at a screening and realize Jan is there and Mary Ann and the family is sitting with you and seeing the impact of him in our show in this narrative way, and then also in their seeing the show—that was probably the first time that I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a piece of this thing that’s really uncomfortable,’ in a great way, in a necessary way.

“But the filming of it was easier than the viewing of it in a lot of ways.”

On Jan Broberg’s ‘Beautiful’ Cameo in the Finale

The finale, which aired on Peacock on November 10, saw the real Jan Broberg play a character, her onscreen counterpart’s therapist.

Though Lacy did not share a scene with Broberg in the finale, he felt it was a “brilliant and incredible” idea to include her in the retelling of her own story.

“I didn’t know that Jan was going to be in it, and I saw her on the day and she was like, ‘today’s the day’ and I was like ‘for what?’ [and she said] ‘I’m playing the child psychologist,'” Lacy said.

“I have so much love for her and for Nick [Antosca, the showrunner] and this whole cast and crew. It really speaks to their collaborative nature and integrity, and also her talent and grace, that she could step into that and say, ‘I want to do this role.’

“I think she’s done years of therapy, and work, and healing that’s led to this. It’s not like the production was a healing moment. But the surreality of her sitting across from 15-year-old Jan Broberg and speaking to her about how she’s doing is—Hollywood aside and TV aside—a really beautiful, crazy thing.

“She’s wonderful in it. You’re not like, ‘oh, that’s the person they brought in,’ you’re like, ‘oh that person’s really good. Oh, that’s Jan Broberg? Oh, my God!’ It’s so cool. I was thrilled.”

A Friend of the Family sees Lacy end his time as Berchtold with the character in defeat, desperately trying to contact Jan who refuses to take his calls. In reality, Berchtold continued to try and get in touch with her, and when she and her mother released their book Stolen Innocence: The Jan Broberg Story, she had to get a restraining order against him.

For Lacy, it felt right to end the drama the way it does because “it’s Jan’s story and it’s the story of the Broberg’s,” so it made the most sense.

“I absolutely think that ending, at that point in the timeline—the narrative is crucial because she’s home, the family’s back together. It’s so difficult in a story that, in a technical sense, is ‘true crime’ to end in a way that isn’t full of despair and sorrow, and most likely death,” Lacy reflected.

“To end the show with the potential for healing and hope, and family, and togetherness in an organic way is [crucial]. I have no part in that but my hat is entirely off to Nick and the writers and Lauren [Wolkstein] who directed the episode and Jan. For them to organically stick that landing is so crucial.”

The finale goes on to show footage of Jan in her court case against Berchtold, in which she told her abuser he should admit his wrongdoings and serve time for it, and also explained that Berchtold went on to continue abusing others after Broberg.

“That footage where Jan is confronting Berchtold in court is so powerful,” Lacy said. “After having watched these nine episodes of actors doing their best to offer what this was like, to then show how strong, brave, eloquent, and grounded Jan is in the face of her predator in her adulthood just accomplishes more than maybe we could ever hope to do as actors, you know?

“In the [finale], it does say Berchtold went on to prey on girls and families for decades. They don’t end it with ‘and then he drifted off into the shadows.’ Narratively, we show that because there is an essence of [it]— for their family, he retreats out into the darkness but, he’s still out there in the night.

“And the reality is that the woman in the psych ward [Berchtold was in], they went on to have a relationship for years and the entirety of that time he abused her daughter from 12 to 17, along with unknown numbers of other young girls.

“So I think that both including that [footage] in the end, and this [information] also speaks to Jan’s intention of saying this continues on, the point isn’t, ‘oh, my story, my abuse at his hands ended here, and therefore things are okay.'”

Lacy went on: “[Jan and Mary Ann Broberg] wrote books, they took him to court, they went on book tours, they spoke to groups, they broke the silence, they didn’t just retreat and say, ‘we’ll deal with our pain over here, and hopefully, nothing happens.’ They want to be offensive and say ‘that’s a predator. That guy over there.’

“I think her intention, on the whole, is to say, ‘silence is the thing that allows this to continue.’ It’s easy to call someone out when they’re a stranger in the darkness, it’s incredibly difficult to have those conversations when it’s your swim coach, your neighbor, your uncle, your grandfather, your scoutmaster, your parishioner at the church you attend, whatever it is.

“Silence is the thing that allows those people to continue to prey on children, whether it’s 1976, or whether it’s 2022.”

A Friend of the Family is out on Peacock now.