A Friend of the Family Filmmakers Open Up About Honoring True-Life Tragedy for Peacock Series

Having worked on beloved TV shows in the horror world like Hannibal, Channel Zero, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, filmmaker Nick Antosca is no stranger to delivering audiences unsettling content. In recent years, Antosca has begun exploring the true crime space, with projects like The Act and Candy drawing influence from various real-life horrors for compelling stories. Antosca continues that trend with Peacock’s A Friend of the Family, with Antosca recently recalling the differences between telling fictional horrors and those that are rooted in reality. A Friend of the Family will make its premiere on Peacock on Thursday, October 6th.

“The horror stories that I told before use a lot of the same muscles as the true crime stories because it’s just a slightly different balance. When you’re telling a fictional horror story, it’s also really important to tell a human story in there, to focus on the characters, to make it be character driven,” Antosca shared with ComicBook.com. “The Broberg story is a psychological horror story. There is a monster in it, and it was just important to focus on the humanity as well as the fear and the tension and the suspense in this story. The added element, of course, is that it really happened and it’s about real people, and there’s a real person whose story we want to honor and do justice to.”

He continued, “And the other thing I would say just about the subject is this is a psychological horror story. It’s terrifying, but as harrowing and disturbing as it is, it is also a story about survival and about a family coming to a place of healing and forgiveness ultimately after an unthinkable ordeal. That was one of the reasons it was important to tell and important to tell in partnership with the real people.”

A Friend of the Family is based on the harrowing true story of the Broberg family, whose daughter Jan was kidnapped multiple times over a period of a few years by a charismatic, obsessed family “friend.” The Brobergs — devoted to their faith, family, and community — were utterly unprepared for the sophisticated tactics their neighbor used to exploit their vulnerabilities, drive them apart, and turn their daughter against them. This is the story of how their lives were permanently altered — and how they survived.  

In an unexpected creative development, Jan Broberg herself served as a producer on the series, offering her own insight and unique perspective on the dramatized version of the events.

“As I’ve told my story for 32 years to small groups, to large groups, and then have these other bigger opportunities now to tell it, I’ve been so grateful because it is therapeutic for me, but it’s also been what I’ve received back from other people who have heard my story in one way or another, ‘Oh gosh, you gave me the words,’” Broberg recalled of the personal motivation to be directly involved in this adaptation. “We have a book, The Jan Broberg Story, and I’ve had people read that and go, ‘Now I have the words. I’m literally reading paragraphs to my mother to tell her what my stepfather did because this is what it was like, and I didn’t know how to say it.’”

She continued, “So in this series, you have a fully formed cast of characters who are real human beings and they are not caricatures. And you will relate to them because if it didn’t happen to you, it happened to someone close to you and it happened at the hands of someone generally close to you, at least in your sports team, or your congregation, or your family, or your neighborhood, your community center. It was not a scary stranger hardly ever. So the psychological thriller, true crime part of this story is fascinating, but the human story is one that everyone that I ever have known, they know someone or it’s happened to them. This is the most common kind of abuse and it’s perpetrated by people who groom the entire orbit and the child slowly over time. And they’ve done a marvelous job telling the story. It’s very truthful, it’s very realistic. The actors are amazing. It’s been a really fantastic opportunity for me to tell the story in a full way more than just the headlines. And I needed that.”

A Friend of the Family premieres on Peacock on October 6th.

Will you be checking out the series? Let us know in the comments!