‘American Hostage’: What Really Happened & What Was Added for the MGM+ Series

A real-life abduction creates tense drama in the new MGM+ series American Hostage. Jon Hamm, one of TV’s busiest actors at the moment, stars as Indianapolis radio newsman Fred Heckman, who became part of the incredible story he was covering in 1977 when an incensed man facing foreclosure took his mortgage broker hostage. During the 63-hour ordeal, Heckman repeatedly speaks by phone to kidnapper Tony Kiritsis (a wild-eyed Giovanni Ribisi), often on the air, becoming a key negotiator in the process.

Hamm first played Heckman in a podcast version of the saga in 2022, and then turned to writer-producer Shawn Ryan to adapt this almost-too-crazy-to-be-true story for the screen. Ryan brought in one of his colleagues on the Netflix series The Night Agent, Eileen Myers, as cocreator, and the result is an eight-episode psychological thriller that’s part crime drama, period piece, and even dark comedy.

“In the research, we realized that there was so much absurdly comic stuff that actually happened,” Myers says. “There was a great deal of petty infighting amongst the police and the DA and Tony’s lawyers, which we found very funny, frankly.”

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Another secondary story involves the relationship between Heckman’s wife, Barbara (Mireille Enos), and Ibby Hall (Kat Cunning), the spouse of kidnap victim Dick Hall (Kristoffer Polaha). “That was really an invention on our part,” Myers explains. “What became appealing was telling a story of an unlikely, spiky friendship that develops between these two women.”

The period setting also means reporters such as William Jackson Harper‘s Ben Hairston are on the scene talking to sources and using heavy analog equipment and landline phones. It’s Ben who speaks out when he feels Heckman has comprised his role as a journalist by becoming part of the news he’s covering.

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And that’s the crux of the story: the interplay between Heckman and Kiritsis. Although the men are in separate locales, their radio conversations were filmed simultaneously. “A really big emotional turning point for both Tony and Fred happens through the intimacy of a phone call,” teases Ryan. “We arranged it so that the two sets were right next to each other, so [the actors] could actually have those moments.”

In fact, the character viewers may find oddly relatable is Kiritsis, who had his supporters in real life. “Tony started to acquire folk-hero status,” says Myers. “I think people bonded to him because he clearly had an American dream and was thwarted, he felt, again and again.”

American Hostage, Series Premiere, Sunday, September 20, 9/8c, MGM+