Is 'Primetime' a true story? We fact-check the Chris Hansen thriller - USA Today
Spoiler alert! We're discussing major details about the plot of "Primetime" (in theaters now). Stop reading if you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to know what happens.
Chris Hansen has a lot of thoughts about "Primetime."
The new movie portrays the former "To Catch a Predator" host in a state of psychosis, compulsive in his pursuit of trapping alleged pedophiles and ruling the airwaves. Ahead of the film's release, Hansen told USA TODAY that the neon-drenched thriller is a "complete work of fiction." And after watching "Primetime," "I'm not sure what the point was," he said on his podcast Sept. 25, giving star Robert Pattinson a "D" for his performance.
So who are the real people portrayed in "Primetime?" And what actually happened behind the scenes of the lightning-rod NBC series? Here's what's fact and fiction:
"Primetime" screenwriter Ajon Singh declines to get into specifics about the actual decoys who inspired the film, while Merritt Wever ‒ who plays cutthroat “Predator” producer Andie Bender ‒ says that she spoke to many different kinds of TV producers in prepping for the film.
“I talked to them about the stickiness of the interpersonal stuff that happens with the host,” Wever says. “They’re in charge of making sure the show gets done on time and that you come in under budget, but you also become a therapist when they need a therapist and a mom when they need a mom.”
The film is based in part on the 2007 Esquire article "Tonight on 'Dateline' This Man Will Die," which offers clues about who may be who in “Primetime.” Lynn Keller was the lead producer on “Predator” at the time and now works at “Dateline NBC.” Dan Schrack, a young male decoy-turned-journalist, was seemingly the primary inspiration for Skyler Gisondo’s character Dan Plum. (He, too, was nicknamed “Decoy Dan.”)
And the real-life Del Harvey — a member of Perverted-Justice who worked as both a male and female decoy — is the closest analog to Phoebe Bridgers’ character, also named Del.
“Primetime” is bookended with Dan singing “Seasons of Love” from the 1996 Broadway musical “Rent.” The aspiring actor performs it brightly at the start of the film during an audition, and then again mournfully in the last scene while he’s on the phone with alleged pedophile Bill Conradt (Alex Winter), who commits suicide moments later.
Written by Jonathan Larson, the emotional anthem asks how we measure our time here on Earth and emphasizes the importance of connection. The Esquire article mentions Schrack’s love of musicals, which is how Singh landed on this particular showtune.
“In the original script, it was actually a performance of a ‘Willy Wonka’ song,” Singh says. But “Rent” felt more appropriate thematically: “The Dan character is someone who believes he's actually going to get the thing he's been chasing his whole life. And then in that final moment, he’s shrouded in what is a very big police operation. He doesn’t know whether he’s proud to be associated with it, so that ‘Seasons of Love’ moment is supposed to be pretty tragic.”
The film ends with Texas prosecutor Bill Conradt, who shot himself while police swarmed his house as part of a “Predator” sting operation in 2006. Conradt’s sister, Patricia, filed a $105 million wrongful death lawsuit against NBC Universal that was settled out of court, and “Predator” was canceled in 2007.
In the movie, Hansen has a mental breakdown in the days leading up to the Conradt sting. His downward spiral owes in large part to persistent calls from the National Enquirer, which is threatening to release photos of him cozying up to another woman at a restaurant.
In reality, the two events did not happen concurrently: Hansen was accused of cheating on his wife, Mary Joan (played by Anna Faris), with Florida TV reporter Kristyn Caddell after they were caught on camera having an allegedly romantic dinner. But the alleged rendezvous took place in 2011 – five years after Conradt’s suicide – and Hansen denied the infidelity accusations.
In an early scene of “Primetime,” Hansen and Andie meet with NBC head Jeff Zucker (playing himself), who congratulates the duo on the ratings success of “To Catch a Predator.” To capitalize on the show’s popularity, he puts the series in the network’s primetime slot, where it will directly compete for eyeballs with ABC’s hit sci-fi mystery “Lost.”
From there, Hansen and Andie become single-minded about making “Predator” more shocking and scandalous so it will be the No. 1 show on TV.
According to Zucker, “Primetime” is an accurate representation of the media landscape in the mid-2000s. “When he stepped onto the set, where we had reconstructed this NBC office and programming board, I remember him remarking that it was very similar to his experience and how it felt,” Singh recalls. “As a screenwriter, you're imagining these conversations and how they might go in these boardrooms. The fact that he didn’t take issue with any of it was pretty great.”
In one of the movie’s more chilling sequences, Hansen tells Dan a story about how he became obsessed with the idea of monsters and child predators while on a reporting trip to India as a young journalist. (“We are cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” Hansen says in the film.)
“Chris has spoken about his time in India,” Singh says. “He was working on a story about child slave labor. We have this article from the New York Times from the 1990s about these child disappearances in India, and I became very obsessed with it. So we tried to find a way to work these stories in together because we wanted to create this idea that Chris may start out wanting to dominate primetime.
“But by the end, he’s totally unleashed and wants to rid the world of this ancient evil.”
