A Friend of the Family: McKenna Grace talks working with Jan Broberg

McKenna Grace plays a teenage Jan Broberg in A Friend of the Family. She talked about getting the role and working with Jan in this exclusive interview.

You think you know the story of Jan Broberg. The documentary on Netflix, Abducted in Plain Sight, certainly tells part of the story. Nick Antosca and his team of writers had more time to develop the story with this nine-part limited series.

It helped that Jan Broberg and her mother, Mary Ann, were willing to work with Nick as producers to tell the story. After all, this is still a traumatizing event from their lives.

McKenna Grace plays a teenage Jan in the story. She’s not the only person playing the role. Hendrix Yancey plays a younger version of the character. During an exclusive interview with McKenna, she shared what it was like having a younger counterpart there, along with the real Jan Broberg.

Working with two styles in A Friend of the Family

All actors want to bring their A-Game. They usually have the chance to develop a character from start to finish, but that wasn’t the case for McKenna. She had to work off everything Hendrix was doing. The two were the same person, just a couple of years apart.

It’s not often an actor will need to do this. What’s even rarer is working with the real person the character is based on. Jan Broberg was there for some parts of filming, and it turns out she shared some secrets of what she would at done at times. McKenna let us know what that was like working closely with Jan and working these parts of her into the character.

But how familiar with the original story was she? It turns out that while McKenna had see the documentary pop up on her Netflix, she didn’t watch it until she got the part. After landing the role on A Friend of the Family, she dived into everything she could to get into the mind of Jan and understand the story better. That wouldn’t have been easy reading!

Take a look at the full interview with McKenna Grace for A Friend of the Family below:

A Friend of the Family premieres on Peacock on Thursday, Oct. 6 with four episodes. The remaining five episodes will be released weekly.