This interview with “A Friend of the Family” production designer John D. Kretschmer first appeared in the Below-the-Line issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
A miniseries created by Nick Antosca (“Channel Zero”), “A Friend of the Family” follows the charming but sinister Robert Berchtold (Jake Lacy), who spent years seducing, brainwashing, and ultimately kidnapping, twice, a Idaho youth. Jan Broberg (played by Hendrix Yancey and Mckenna Grace at different ages). The story “is pretty shocking,” said production designer John D. Kretschmer. “However, this family survived, and they are still alive and happy and a loving family today. That makes them very intriguing, and I thought (it was) a story that needed to be told.”
Kretschmer and his team wanted to honor the Broberg family, even recreating their home in Pocatello Idaho. They did it in Atlanta, where they found a house on a hill that turned out to be an amazing visual match. “We had a big sky horizon and a house to renovate,” he said. “We matched the windows to the original house and exactly replicated the floor plan.”
The miniseries also takes some of the most comforting places we all traverse—skating rinks, ice cream parlors, flower shops, churches—and clouds them with terror, especially as young Jan navigates her adolescence with Robert in often terrifying proximity. And while Jan was heavily involved in the making of “Family,” Berchtold committed suicide in 2005 and remains a mystery.
“We had very little to go on,” said Kretschmer, who also designed all eight seasons of Showtime’s “Homeland” before tackling “Family.” “But this was a guy who had a lot of money and we knew his house was full of games and a player piano. And luckily, we were able to get the police reports and get almost the exact model of RV that he was driving, a GMC 260.”
Kretschmer added that his own experience was key in creating the look of the nine-episode miniseries. “I’m exactly the same age as Jan Broberg, so I lived a lot in this world,” he said. “I grew up in a Protestant neighborhood in North Carolina that was probably very similar to Jan’s Mormon neighborhood. I think the response I’ve appreciated most from both the Brobergs and Nick and the writing team is that everything looks and feels authentic. . And at the end of the day, that’s what we wanted to achieve.”
Read more of the issue below the line here.
