Although Jake Lacy is usually known for his “quintessential Good Guy” roles, the actor says he had no qualms about playing pedophile Robert Berchtold in A Friend of the Family.
Speaking with IndieWire following the miniseries’ release, Lacy says that he felt comfortable taking on the project—which explores Berchtold’s kidnappings (yes, plural) of his family friends’ teenage daughter Jan Broberg Felt—because it met two very important criteria for him.
Lacy, 37, also said that he was intrigued by the challenge of playing a person so different from the “nice guy” roles the actor says he can “do in his sleep.”
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And trusting the crew behind him paid off. Lacy says that showrunners provided him with a treasure trove of primary source material from Felt, including diary entries and letters while preparing to get in the head of Berchtold.
The actor says he was careful to separate his own views from Berchtold’s perspective and did so by trying to “digest the elements” of the pedophile’s life as he was growing up, as well as studying predatory behavior and manipulation tactics.
And to achieve the latter, Lacy turned to literature and picked up Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, a novel told from a pedophile’s perspective.
“Also, reading Lolita to have a narrative way into this mindset. Berchtold, his nickname for Jan was Dolly, which is taken directly from Lolita. That’s not Nick lifting it, that’s Robert Berchtold taking that as an inside joke to himself, in a way,” he adds.
A Friend of the Family streams Thursdays on Peacock.
