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Elizabeth Smart Will Never Watch Her Lifetime Movie Again: "It Was Terrifying"

Exclusive: Elizabeth Smart opens up to E! News about watching the story of her abduction for the first time

By Tierney Bricker Nov 19, 2017 2:05 AMTags
Watch: Elizabeth Smart Never Wants to Watch Her Movie Again

 Someone who didn't tune in to watch I Am Elizabeth Smart, Lifetime's latest TV movie about the 2002 abduction of Elizabeth Smart that premiered on Saturday night? The subject herself, who served as the film's narrator and was a producer on the movie, which provides an intimate look at her nine-month kidnapping when she was 14 years old. 

"I'm pretty proud of it and I've watched it and, no offense to Alana [Boden, who played Smart in the film], she was great, but I never want to watch it again," Smart, now 29, told E! News' Kristin Dos Santos during the 2017 Summer TCA Press Tour. "That's how good it was." 

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Sergei Bachlakov/A&E

While Smart had been on the set during filming, meeting Alana, Skeet Ulrich (who played her captor and abuser Brian David Mitchell) and Deirdre Lovejoy (playing Mitchell's wife Wanda Barzee), she still wasn't prepared for the first time she sat down to watch the movie. 

"I had been over the script probably about 100 times...then I narrate a lot of it, so I had seen a lot of the difference pieces," Smart explained, "and then finally watching the whole thing come together in one format, it was terrifying." 

Smart is now married to Matthew Gilmour and the couple have two children, but ended up watching the story of her abduction alone. 

"My husband was downstairs watching the kids and trying to put my daughter to bed and I was just upstairs in our bedroom and I was watching it. And I kept thinking, I don't have to watch this right now! i don't want to watch this! I'm just going to put it away, I can come back after I've had a breather," she said. "Then I said, no, I have to watch it. I have to know how it turns out...just because it was so accurate. It was terrifying  and so intense and part of me was like I don't know if I want to feel all of these emotions again."

But Smart did end up watching the entire movie, and said, "It did turn out to be what I wanted it to be. I am very proud of it."

To hear more from Smart about how hesitant she was to take part in the movie, as well as to hear Skeet Ulrich talk about taking on the role of Mitchell, watch our interview with them above now. 

Did you watch Lifetime's I Am Elizabeth Smart? What did you think of the Lifetime movie? Sound off in the comments.