Lifetime's new movie "When Andrew Came Home" won't be easy viewing for parents. Inspired by a true story, the drama deals with a parent's worst nightmare: the kidnapping of a child by a former spouse.
"I don't think people want to face the truth of this issue and subject," says Park Overall, who stars in the cable movie premiering tonight. "I hope we will get viewers. I know it's [a subject matter] nobody wants to look at."
Overall plays Gail Carlson, the loving mother of 5-year-old Andrew. Her instincts tell her that something isn't right when her ex-husband arrives with his new girlfriend to pick up Andrew for his weekend visit. Her ex doesn't like the fact that Andrew is enjoying the company of Gail's new boyfriend, Eddie, (Jason Beghe). When he doesn't return the boy after the weekend, Gail and the authorities begin to search for Andrew. But he seems to have vanished into thin air.
Five years later, Gail is married to Eddie and has a new baby, but she still hasn't given up her search for Andrew. One day, she receives a phone call from her ex-husband saying he is sending Andrew back home on a bus. But instead of the warm, happy 5-year-old she once knew, the Andrew (Seth Adkins) who steps off the bus is a dirty and sullen wild child who eats with his hands and can't read or write. After being neglected for five years, he can barely socialize. And he resents Gail.
"This little boy's captivity, if you call it that, may be a little more brutal than others'," says Susan Rice, who wrote the teleplay and spent time with the real woman the drama is based on. "Her son is now grown . . . [and] he is doing all right. I don't know if you ever get over an experience like this. I guess that everything he learned [while with his father], he learned from television."
In kidnapping cases like this, says Rice, the child's interest or presence means little to the parent who commits the abduction. The motivation is more often revenge or anger.
"For this particular father it was the anger at seeing his son happy with a new father and a new family," says Rice. "It was incendiary to him. He didn't bring him up, he kept him like a pet, but probably without as much affection as most pets get."
Director Artie Mandelberg ("Moonlighting") felt a real connection to the material as a divorced father of three. "My kids went through a divorce," he says. "Anything dealing with kids just sort of hits me. What I liked a lot about this is that it wasn't a hostage story. It was about what some people are doing to their kids."
