“You can't rewrite history,” explained Tanya Kach about how faithfully her story was adapted for the Lifetime Original movie The Girl Locked Upstairs: The Tanya Kach Story. In 1996, 14-year-old Tanya disappeared, trapped in a school janitor’s home for a decade, re-enacted in a film from executive producer Elizabeth Smart. “I wanted it as accurate as possible, and Robert [Baker] and Jordan [Olson] did a great job on their acting in this movie. I mean, Jordan got me down pat. My actions, how I was, and everything. They've done a spectacular job at this.”
(Lifetime)
“It's always a little terrifying going into a role knowing that you're portraying a real-life human,” revealed Jordan Olson, who plays Tanya in The Girl Locked Upstairs. “You want to do them justice and you want their story to be told a way they would want it to be presented. You don't want to offend them or upset them. It's their story, it's their life, so that was very intimidating going in. But it was with the shooting schedule we had. There was no time to really think or dwell or have anxiety about it. You’ve got to be in this story now, and you've got to tell it to the best of your ability and hope that it turns out the way you think it will.”
“I read up as much as I could find about the story,” shared Robert Baker about preparing to play Tanya’s captor, Tom Hose. “He was a monster but that's not my job to show a monster. The story does that. My job is to be a human being, so I had to find a way to make him a human being, and then his actions are obviously monstrous.” Playing Tanya and Tom across the span of a decade on a TV movie’s fast-paced shooting schedule also became a benefit to the actors. “We shot in pretty good sequence, which is pretty rare.” For Jordan, the passage of time is often revealed through changes in hair and makeup, while Robert had to cover up gray hairs to play Tom at the start of the story and also slowed down his physicality towards the end of the decade.
The premiere of The Girl Locked Upstairs: The Tanya Kach Story is paired with a documentary, Beyond the Headlines: The Tanya Kach Story with Elizabeth Smart. “It was wonderful working with her,” Tanya Kach said about bonding with another woman who could personally relate to her experience. “She is so kind and so sweet and so generous. Meeting her meant a lot to me, and I think it meant a lot to her, too, because even aside from being on camera, we had personal conversations, which I think meant a lot to both of us.”
The hope of everyone in both films is to ensure that the horrific situations experienced by women like Tanya Kach and Elizabeth Smart never happen again. “I personally have gotten messages from a lot of mothers saying that they're going to watch it with their teenage daughters,” Tanya revealed. “You don't ever want something like this to happen again,” added Jordan Olson.
The Girl Locked Upstairs: The Tanya Kach Story premieres Saturday, June 8th, at 8/7c on Lifetime, immediately followed by Beyond the Headlines: The Tanya Kach Story with Elizabeth Smart.