Robert Berchtold: 'A Friend of the Family' Star on Playing 'Predator's Wife

Lio Tipton is about to get married; but first, they had to get through the New York premiere of their upcoming show, A Friend of the Family.

The actor, who is queer and non-binary and goes by they/them pronouns, plays Gail Berchtold in a harrowing retelling of the true story involving the Broberg family, whose daughter Jan was kidnapped multiple times and sexually abused by Gail's husband, Robert Berchtold.

"It's a very tragic, troubling story about these two families," Tipton told Newsweek. "I play Gail, who is married to Bob Berchtold, and Bob Berchtold is a predator who ends up seducing, or actually, grooming the families, and doing some pretty terrible things."

Jake Lacy (White Lotus) plays Bob Berchtold in the show, which is based on the 2017 Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight. The story revolves around Jan Broberg's relationship with Berchtold, but it is Gail's character that tends to bewilder most.

Tipton said, "There's this lingering question that the show leaves off, 'Does Gail know what's going on?' 'Is she helping him?' 'Is she completely ignorant?'" But rather than approaching Gail's character with a stark understanding, they instead said, "I filtered everything I did through basically this idea of family and love. Everything Gail does is out of love for her family. And it's fierce and it's necessary and she's doing the best that she can not, not wanting to hurt anyone else, definitely, but desperately, desperately trying to keep safe her own. And I think I think a lot of parents will be able to relate to that."

Finding that aspect of the character was not easy, Tipton said.

"It was really tricky," they said. "Some of it because, on one hand, I had to really find how to love Jake's character and not be constantly disgusted and disturbed by him."

Lacy and Tipton, alongside Anna Paquin and Colin Hanks, who play Jan's parents, Bob and Mary Ann, got to work with the real Jan Broberg in order to tell her story.

"This was the first type of experience that I had, not in playing something real, but playing something so tragic and real," Tipton said. "And I feel like this story itself is so remarkable and so unbelievable that having Jan there...it grounded everyone."

"Jan being there like in the flesh was like, 'Wow, this happened to someone' and it definitely made the work much more important and vital, like you want to tell her story," said Tipton.

The actor, who got their start on America's Next Top Model and breakthrough in Crazy, Stupid, Love in 2012, came out as non-binary a little over a year ago and has said that since then, playing roles like Gail—a traditional, straight female—has been much easier.

"In the past, I've had a lot of resentment sometimes toward these roles because I have taken it personally. I put myself into the role. And I think I was so uncomfortable with myself and my gender, that it would be very difficult for me to mentally separate myself from the role," Tipton said. "I can separate myself a lot more when I step back out of it. I don't feel the weight of the confusion or the anger or all that negativity that goes on in one's head."

"It was a slow realization, as I think it is for most people, and when it clicked, when it really clicked, I just knew there wasn't going back," Tipton said of their coming out. "The freedom that I think it opened up within myself...it's very exhausting to try to fit in a box that's not yours. I feel like we're always going to be in our own boxes, but I finally found one that gives me space to be myself."

The first episode of A Friend of the Family will stream on Peacock on October 6.