Based on actual events, ‘Girl in Room 13’ begins with Grace (Larissa Diaz), a young woman who has just returned after going into rehab for addiction. She has been clean for a month now and has started to work in a restaurant. Before getting into drugs, she was a great swimmer and won national championships three years in a row, but some bad choices in life made her take the wrong path. One of her life’s bad choices was Richie, her ex-boyfriend who introduced her to drugs. Now that she’s out and having a great life, her mother Janie (Heche), her new father Burt (Matt Hamilton), and step-sister Toni (Erika Bruci) is trying to protect her from the bad influence.
This is a rather heavy story from start to finish. Why did you feel it was important to tell?
Elisabeth Röhm: It never ceases to amaze me the statistics around human trafficking. Anne had even said this many times, as did everybody in the cast, including Lifetime, that this story has to be told sufficiently. It’s a $150 billion industry, and there are survivors today going through their own journey.
Telling not only a comprehensive story, but also creating a behind the headlines, sort of connective tissue to this non-profit, Polaris, to create more awareness and put a spotlight on the subject of human trafficking was really the drumbeat of the set every day. And it really was specifically for Anne, because she was not a survivor of human trafficking, but of abuse. It was deeply personal to all of us.
What about her performance stands out most to you? And what about Larissa’s?
I just really genuinely wanted to encourage them to go all in and know that I would protect them and they wouldn’t give over the top performances. They would be grounded, just raw and riveting. This mother deeply knows that her daughter is unsafe, and no matter what she’s going to find her. And as the clock is ticking, she is just torn apart, and Anne really, really went there.
The same thing with Larissa. As opposed to giving a performance of a girl in these circumstances, she went all the way to a place where it was as if she was in those circumstances. I would just really want to say thank you to both actresses — and Max Montesi for playing the villain — to really trust me to go to a very dark place to portray just how evil this act is, what it means to a victim, and what it means to a parent or a loved one who is in the pursuit of finding their loved one. I’m really proud of each of them. They’re so brave as actors.
Meanwhile, everyone who has known Grace is resigned to her disappearance: She’s probably using drugs again — what can be done? Janie, though, is convinced that something awful has happened, and fights with the police and even her husband, urging them to take action to find Grace. Day by day, hour by hour, Janie grows more hectoring, angry and frantic.
This is a big role for Heche, and also a punishing one, requiring her to perform at what seems to be the highest pitch, and then somehow higher than that. But beneath that is the sturdy, steady power of maternal love — Heche gives us that, too.
Girl in Room 13 premieres tonight on Lifetime at 8 p.m. ET.
