This really happened. And somehow, the true story is even stranger than fiction.
I sat down with Giovanni Ribisi, Mireille Enos and Kristoffer Polaha to talk about MGM+’s gripping “American Hostage,” which revisits the extraordinary 1977 hostage crisis involving Tony Kiritsis and Richard “Dick” Hall — a case that became a live media spectacle as it unfolded over the airwaves.
Giovanni Ribisi disappears into the role of Tony Kiritsis, a volatile and complicated figure whose actions horrified — and fascinated — the public. I asked Giovanni how he approached finding Tony’s humanity without excusing what he did, and whether portraying a man whose crisis became a media event changed the way he thinks about sensationalism and public perception.
Kristoffer Polaha plays Dick Hall, the man Kiritsis took hostage. Polaha studied Hall’s memoir and archival material in preparing for the role, so I wanted to know what he discovered about the real man that changed the way he approached his performance.
And considering Ribisi and Polaha spend so much of the story locked in an extraordinarily intense captor-and-hostage relationship, I had to ask: How do you shake something like that off when the cameras stop rolling?
Then there’s Mireille Enos, who plays Barbara Heckman, wife of radio reporter Fred Heckman, portrayed by Jon Hamm. Barbara gives us another perspective on a story increasingly consumed by the media circus surrounding it.
There’s also a fascinating coincidence: “American Hostage” and Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire” both dramatize the Kiritsis story, but in very different formats. I asked Enos what a series can explore about these people and events that a feature film simply doesn’t have the same amount of time to examine.
Finally, I asked all three actors what they hope stays with viewers after the hostage crisis, the headlines and the spectacle are over.
Watch my full conversation with Giovanni Ribisi, Mireille Enos and Kristoffer Polaha above.
“American Hostage” is streaming on MGM+.
And seriously — if you don’t already know the story of Tony Kiritsis, buckle up. This one is wild.
