Killer Thriller: Skeet Ulrich Played Elizabeth Smart’s Captor, Then Met Her Face to Face
Legally Brunette
iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A 14-year-old girl is taken from her bedroom and held captive for nine months; a case that still feels impossible to process. Skeet Ulrich almost didn’t take the role of her captor, saying he couldn’t justify stepping into someone that dark until he understood the bigger story. What followed clearly stayed with him: from scenes so intense crew members walked off set, to the moment Elizabeth Smart walked onto the set while he was fully in character. He opens up about the toll it took, the nightmare that came out of it, and how his own past shaped the way he connected to her story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:10.6 | Amy Robock and T.J. Holmes present. |
| 0:13.5 | Killer Thriller with your host, Alisa Donovan. |
| 0:18.4 | Hey, everybody, Elisa Donovan here here and welcome to Killer Thriller. |
| 0:23.3 | Today, we are talking about one of the most horrifying abduction cases in modern American history, |
| 0:30.6 | the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. |
| 0:33.4 | In June of 2002, Elizabeth was just 14 years old when she was taken at knife point from her bedroom in Salt Lake City in the middle of the night. |
| 0:42.8 | What followed was a nine-month nightmare of captivity, abuse, public sightings, missed clues, and a country desperately hoping she would be found alive. |
| 0:53.5 | Then in March of 2003, Elizabeth was finally rescued |
| 0:57.4 | on a street in Utah with the people who had abducted her. The Lifetime film I Am Elizabeth Smart |
| 1:04.1 | tells that story in a deeply personal way, with Elizabeth herself serving as narrator, refusing to let the audience look away |
| 1:13.2 | or distance themselves from what she endured. And my guest today is Skeet Ulrich, who plays her |
| 1:19.4 | captor, Brian David Mitchell, a role that is chilling, unsettling, and incredibly hard to shake. |
| 1:27.9 | Skeet, welcome to Killer Thriller. |
| 1:29.6 | Thank you so much for being here. |
| 1:31.6 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:32.6 | I appreciate it. |
| 1:34.4 | I am so overwhelmed by this movie. |
| 1:39.7 | I had not seen it before, and I obviously was familiar with Elizabeth Smart's case. |
| 1:47.1 | And it's, first of all, it's really stunning and your work in it is phenomenal. |
| 1:54.9 | And, you know, this case is so horrifying from the start that it's a 14-year-old girl taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night. |
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