See Mckenna Grace as Abducted Teenager Jan Broberg in 'A Friend of the Family'

A Friend of the Family
Peacock

The true-crime series recounts the harrowing story of a young girl kidnapped multiple times by the same man. 

Mckenna Grace is channeling Jan Broberg in the first official look at the upcoming true-crime series A Friend of the Family, which chronicles the harrowing story about a teenage girl who was kidnapped multiple times by the same man. 

Set to premiere Oct. 6 on Peacock, the limited series from showrunner and executive producer Nick Antosca recounts the unbelievable real story about how Jan and the Broberg family were manipulated by their trusted neighbor, Robert Berchtold, who ended up exploiting the parents before turning their daughter against them. 

In addition to Grace, A Friend of the Family will also star Anna Paquin as Jan’s trusting mother, Mary Ann, alongside Colin Hanks as Jan’s big-hearted father, Bob, with Jake Lacy as Robert and Lio Tipton as his concerned wife, Gail.  

Peacock

Along with the image of Grace as Jan, Peacock also shared an image of The White Lotus actor as Robert.

The scripted saga, meanwhile, comes years after the Broberg family’s stranger-than-fiction story became a media sensation thanks to the Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight. In 2019, Jan, now 59, spoke with ET about the circumstances surrounding her being kidnapped twice by the same man and how it even happened.

"Grooming and manipulation is so subtle," Jan said at the time. "We don't think this kind of thing could happen to us and yet somewhere deep inside, we've all been conned or we've all had some brush with somebody taking advantage of us to some degree.” 

Netflix

“People don't want to believe that they aren't seeing something that's in their own family or in their own congregation or in their own neighborhood, but that's because we have a bias,” she continued. “The person we trust and love, we're not going to see the little, subtle warning signs because we don't want to, first of all. So, that's really the crux of that story.”


A Friend of the Family premieres Oct. 6 on Peacock.

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