EXCLUSIVE | 'Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story' actress Tiera Skovbye was fascinated by 'this wild story'
Spoilers for 'Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story' Episode 2 'The Turtle and the Alligator'
USA Network's 'Dirty John: the Betty Broderick Story' retells the story of America's most infamous divorce case with an impressive and thrilling narrative that knocks your socks off. Betty Broderick was the perfect Southern California blonde wife and mother until she wasn't. Her marriage to her handsome college boyfriend Dan Broderick seems picture-perfect, but it is decaying from within -- a long-term deterioration that both husband and wife are somewhat aware of. Yet they both continue the facade of the best couple of the block with ease until the two are face to face with a messy divorce that threatens to take everything away from them.
Betty (played by Amanda Peet) and Dan's (Christian Slater) journey till here wasn't an easy one. Money was often tight and Dan's ambitions were never ceasing. Years of sacrifice and suffering form the basis of their marriage. It is in the second episode of the series, 'The Turtle and the Alligator', that creator Alexandra Cunningham shows just how much work Betty put into Dan so that he could reach the top -- the very summit where he stands today and mocks her. Flashbacks introduce us to a young Betty, who is played by Tiera Skovbye, and Dan (Chris Mason), who get together very young, barely out of college, and they soon start a married life full of kids and struggles. Through med school, law school, and many pregnancies, Betty supports Dan till he eventually hits it big, exploding in the San Diego legal community as a superstar.
A very intelligent Dan successfully passes medical school and then decides to get into a law school to become a medical malpractice lawyer. He cannot possibly work much because he needs to study, so Betty puts in the extra hours and a lot more even when she is heavily pregnant. Over the course of their relationship, Betty miscarried her pregnancy. She also gave birth to a boy, who died two days after birth. Her repeated for contraception is denied because Dan was a devout Catholic. Skovbye, who plays the young character, reveals something even more surprising. "Betty, I believe, was pregnant nine times in the course of her and Dan's relationship," she tells MEA WorldWide in an exclusive interview. When she first received the script for the series, she was "immediately very fascinated by this wild story and wanted to know everything!"
Peet and Skovbye play the same character, a woman who finds herself "lost" after her decade-long marriage fails, a marriage she had invested her life and soul in. Not to mention, she was penniless after her husband made it big on her back. Skovbye does a stunning job of playing the younger version of the actress. "I was lucky enough to be able to watch some of the stuff she had already filmed as well as spend time on set watching her before I started. I really let Amanda lay the groundwork and did what I could to follow suit and add background to the story," she says. Skovbye deems the failure of the marriage "an unfortunate and tragic story."
"It's really important to remember there are two sides to every story," she adds. "Both Dan and Betty went down some very dark paths and they both did horrible things that eventually ended in tragedy." Although in real life, Betty and Dan's divorce was covered extensively by the media, not a lot is known about their early years together. "There is so much information out there about this story so I did as much research as I could but there really isn't much on their early years, the years where there was still hope for them. I felt like it was really important to show some of the love and sacrifice from the early years, which I think was really well told in the scripts," she says.
Indeed, Cunningham's anthology series takes a deep dive into the time when Betty and Dan, young and hopeful, started their life together -- a life that was going to be filled by struggles, perhaps even remorse, which eventually ended, like Skovbye said, "in tragedy." Outside of 'Dirty John', the actress is, much like you and I, in lockdown. "I've been doing alright! Going a little stir crazy but very lucky to be home in Vancouver and close to my family," Skovbye says and adds that she is now eager to return to work. "I had just started filming the second season of 'Nurses' when everything got shut down, really can't wait to get back to work on that!" She is now awaiting the release of her upcoming movie '2 Hearts' alongside Jacob Elordi.
Following a two-episodic premiere, 'Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story' will air in the show's usual time slot at 10 pm ET on USA Network.