In the late summer of 2021, actor Jake Lacy broke out into a newer, darker aspect of his sunny, “boyfriend next door” persona in Mike White’s The White Lotus. As Shane, Lacy leveraged his matinee idol good looks and radiant charm to convey a man who believed the world owed him the best it could offer. Forget the privilege and money into which he was born. He deserved that pineapple suite, dammit, even if he was making his new bride Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) completely miserable in the process.
The Television Academy recognized the strength of his performance and its key contributions to the excellent ensemble cast by rewarding him with a Supporting Actor in a Limited Series Emmy nomination. Next up, Lacy pushed that career maturity even farther with Peacock’s A Friend of the Family. Truth be told, his role as Robert Berchtold couldn’t be farther from the kinds of roles Lacy was traditionally offered, but by giving an excellent, acclaimed performance, he most definitely rose to the challenge.
A Friend of the Family tells the true-life story of Robert Berchtold (Lacy), a pedophile and child abductor who used his stature as a close friend of the Broberg family to conduct multiple terrible offenses against their daughter, Jan. Lacy’s performance smartly relies on his charm and good looks to mask the evil inherent in Berchtold. It’s a mature, carefully measured, and awards-worthy performance that speaks volumes about Lacy’s growth as an actor.
Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Lacy talks about his experience on White’s The White Lotus and how it continues to infer future work. He talks about making career choices with smart scripts that open him up to new opportunities. He also reveals how he found his way into such a dark and disturbed character with the full support of Berchtold victim Jan Broberg, a producer on A Friend of the Family. Finally, going back to The White Lotus, we spitball an imagined future for Shane and Rachel and whether or not he thinks Shane would ever return to a White Lotus property again.
A Friend of the Family streams exclusively on Peacock.
