Monday 16 April 2012

Rob Lowe becomes Drew Peterson in Lifetime

Sitting Saturday in the Will County Jail, Drew Peterson watched a Lifetime movie about the five years leading up to his arrest and found it "hysterical."


His missing fourth wife's family, meanwhile, was stunned by the inaccuracies and jumbled timeline.


The cable TV movie, "Drew Peterson: Untouchable," depicts the retired Bolingbrook police sergeant as a loutish misogynist who killed his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and caused his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, to disappear.


As with any Hollywood production, the film has a few fabricated parts, including a scene in which the Peterson character — played by a mustachioed Rob Lowe — opens his neighbor's garage, stares her down and declares: "I'm untouchable, bitch."


"He thought it was hysterical," said Peterson's lead defense attorney, Joel Brodsky. "He chuckled at all of the inaccuracies and things that never happened."


Brodsky said the movie could play an important role in jury selection and whether the defense asks for a change of venue.


The film, which is based on the nonfiction book “Fatal Vows: The Tragic Wives of Drew Peterson” by former Joliet Herald-News reporter Joe Hosey, looks at Peterson while he was married to his third wife, Kathleen Savio. It was during this time that he became lovers with Stacy (played in the movie by "The Big Bang Theory's" Kaley Cuoco), who was 30 years his junior.


Peterson has been behind bars since May 2009, charged with murdering Savio; he is awaiting trial. He is also suspected in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.


"I had followed the story for so long," Lowe said in recalling Peterson. "My trailer is always on CNN. I just thought he was a true eccentric -- among other possible things."


Lowe added that assuming the role of a real-life person was enticing as an actor: "For me, finding those places to make him fully dimensional was interesting. Here he is, this dark, threatening, potentially dangerous character who clearly had an ability to charm young, beautiful women."


Lowe said he spent "hours and hours and hours and hours" looking at film and listening to Peterson speak.


"The stuff he actually says you couldn't make up," he said. "So much so that I worry that when people see it, they'll think it's over the top. It's not. He said these things."


Back in July, Peterson's lawyers unsuccessfully made attempts to stop production on the movie, serving Lowe and Lifetime Entertainment with cease-and-desist letters. Peterson apparently isn't too impressed with the end result after watching a trailer for the two-hour movie.

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