‘Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story’: He Said/She Said With Christian Slater & Amanda Peet
Q&A
The fatal 1980s divorce case that inspired two 1992 TV movies starring Meredith Baxter fuels Season 2 of the love-gone-wrong anthology, which moves from Bravo to USA. This time, Amanda Peet (Brockmire) dazzles as spiraling San Diego divorcée Betty with Christian Slater (Mr. Robot) as Dan, her duplicitous lawyer husband.
Luckily, the Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story actors got along better than their characters!
How did you first meet?
Christian Slater: Honestly, I feel like I’ve known Amanda my whole life. We’ve crossed paths several times. On this, it may have been when we were doing the camera tests.
Amanda Peet: We came close to working together on [a movie]. But I’ve always admired him and had a huge crush on him when I was younger.
Your impression now?
Slater:Committed. She really wanted to dig deeply into who she thought Betty was.
Peet: That he’s still crush-worthy. [Laughs]
(Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)
What would you consider the Brodericks’ fatal flaw?
Slater: Neither was willing to get help. They both just stewed in ill thoughts and thought they could figure it out themselves.
Peet:They didn’t know how to communicate. I also think Betty was mentally ill. She had these rageful feelings and wasn’t ever able to crawl out of that place.
For you, what was the hardest part of filming this?
Slater: The crew! They’d say, “Christian, we like you so much, but then you do these scenes and we hate you.” So that was challenging. [Laughs]
Peet:There’s a scene where Betty’s saying really inappropriate things to her 8-year-old son. It was important to me that [we shot that] — I didn’t want to be a part of something that was just going to vilify Dan Broderick and not show how complicated this story is.
What did you think of Tiera Skovbye and Chris Mason, who play younger Betty and Dan?
Slater: A wonderful example of two people absolutely committing. Chris would follow me around on days he didn’t need to be working and study me.
Peet:We were just like, “My God, we’re old.” [Laughs] Oh, yeah.
Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story, Tuesday, June 2, 9/8c, USA
