Why Jon Hamm Says ‘American Hostage’ Feels “Very Relevant” to “Current Political Climate”

In Jon Hamm’s new series, American Hostage, he stars as a local news broadcaster who finds himself in the middle of a hostage situation when a disgruntled borrower kidnaps a mortgage broker.

The 1977 true crime story, which was chronicled on a narrative podcast of the same name also starring Hamm, is decades old, but its political themes closely mirror today’s world, Hamm told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday.

“ I think that there’s some thematic devices that resonate in the culture politically now,” Hamm said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Studio at 1 Hotel during TIFF, presented by sponsor Canada Goose. “I think the idea of a certain segment of the population being overlooked, or feeling overlooked or feeling under-addressed, in their wants and needs and desires. The show is called American Hostage. We fought very hard for that title because we thought it really spoke to the story on several occasions. This man obviously takes a person hostage, but is he in fact hostage to his American Dream?” 

“There’s a lot of resonance to the title,” the Emmy winner added. “I think that’s why the story, for whatever reason, feels — even though it’s a 50-year-old true story — it feels very relevant, given the current political climate.” 

Co-created by Shawn Ryan and Eileen Myers, American Hostage is described by Sony as a “psychological thriller that tells the harrowing true story of Fred Heckman, a beloved Indianapolis radio reporter who is thrust into the middle of a life-or-death crisis when hostage-taker, Tony Kiritsis, demands to be interviewed on his popular radio news program.”

The news story on which the series is based made headlines at the time and reflected a changing media landscape, where live local stories made national news. For Hamm, the local news story he remembers as being the most significant is O.J. Simpson’s infamous police chase in June 1994.   

“ I think probably most people’s first experience of any of that was the O.J. situation because it happened in the middle of a huge sporting event,” Hamm said. “It was national. Most of us live in L.A., and L.A. had a car chase kind of every day, but it was very local. That became a very daily kind of thing in the ’90s. Some helicopter would chase some car going somewhere. The original one was most likely the O.J. situation.” 

“If you go back in time, this [1977 Tony Kiritsis case] is one of the first times we kind of see a local story explode nationally,” Hamm continued. “Another similar thing that happened was the Patty Hearst situation, where when they raided the house down in South Central Los Angeles. … It was the beginning of where we are now. I think the salacious part of this story — through no fault of its own — [it became] this life or death story. [It’s] kind of where we have landed now, where everything is maximized for the salaciousness of its content.” 

American Hostage also shows how audiences previously trusted the information delivered by their news organizations, in stark contrast to today where trust in the media remains at record lows, according to data from Gallup. Ryan emphasized that the “journalistic aspect to the show” is “very pertinent today.”   

“Right now, we live in a very fractured journalist world,” Ryan explained. “You can kind of choose your news more than the news really informing you these days. Back then, I’m old enough to remember what it was like for journalists to be trusted and for the news to be something that was sacred.”

Ryan added that Hamm’s character is “stuck in a very precarious position” in the series because he’s a journalist “who has invested decades into building his reputation as telling the truth … and now he’s also expected to be a hostage negotiator and to try to save two lives.”  

American Hostage is scheduled to premiere on MGM+ on Sept. 20.