What to Watch Saturday: Anne Heche stars in Lifetime movie based on true events
Here’s what’s on TV tonight.
The Girl in Room 13 (8 p.m., Lifetime)
This new movie, inspired by actual events, stars the late Anne Heche, who died last month following a car crash.
In the movie, Heche plays Janie, the mother of a teen who turns her life around after an opioid addiction and three stints in rehab, only to be abducted and imprisoned by a former love interest, who is also a drug dealer. Larissa Dias plays Grace, the daughter, and Max Montesi plays Richie, the bad guy.
Richie keeps Grace locked in a motel room, where he abuses her and forces her to take drugs until he can break her down and then sell her into human trafficking.
Janie, the mom, never gives up on trying to find her daughter. As she searches for Grace, she discovers the dark world of human trafficking and the shocking statistics about its widespread victims and its unexpected accomplices.
Lifetime executives addressed the issue of Heche being attached to the movie shortly after her accident, saying they wanted to release the movie despite the tragedy associated with it in hopes that it will draw attention to the issue of human trafficking.
“This project is important to … each and every one of us,” Amy Winter, Lifetime’s executive VP and head of programming, said at the Television Critics Association press conference in August. “We all started to make a film that would bring attention to the appalling issue of human sex trafficking. We hope that this film moves you and that you are just as inspired as Anne was to help us with our with our mission to stop violence against women.”
What true crime is the movie based on?
Lifetime says the movie is based on several incidents, but not the Jeffrey Epstein case, as some on the internet have guessed. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, “hotels and motels are frequently utilized by traffickers to facilitate forced commercial sex or forced work.”
Here are just a few possibilities based on recent headlines:
An 8-year-old girl was rescued from a hotel room after being abducted in Texas in 2019.
A 16-year-old girl and a 19-year-old woman were rescued at a Columbus, Ohio, area hotel earlier this year during human-trafficking sting operation.
A child sex ring in California was busted in 2021, leading to the arrests of 21 people and the rescue of 10 women and girls.
An American woman was lured to Nigeria as part of a romance scam and kept captive there for more than a year.
DO YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW NEED HELP? Visit the National Human Trafficking Hotline site or call Call 1-888-373-7888 ( TTY: 711) or Text 233733.
Some programming descriptions are provided by networks.
