The Philippine Online Chronicles

Who is Clark Rockefeller?, a television movie about the longest running con artist in FBI history premiered hours ago on Lifetime TV.

It narrated how Clark Rockefeller (real name Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter) abducted his daughter Reigh in 2008 (for which he is still imprisoned for). He not only pretended to be an heir to the famous Rockefeller family and wedded a wealthy lawyer but also impersonated a talk show host and a pentagon adviser.

The film starts with the abduction and flashes back on the different personages that Rockefeller took up. The film also raised the possibility of his link to the murder of a California couple in 1985.

Eric McCormack, best known as Will in Will and Grace, played the faux aristocrat, studying Rockefeller through taped interviews (with NBC’s Natalie Morales) and the Vanity Fair profile "The Man in the Rockefeller Suit."

In an interview with People, McCormack shared his views on Rockefeller. He said what drove Rockefeller was his love for his daughter. And that he was like the “Ultimate Method Actor.” “Like Hamlet, at some point, he crossed the line. He looked in the mirror and he saw Clark Rockefeller," he said.

The show received mixed reviews. According to Mike Hale of The New York Times, “Who Is Clark Rockefeller? attains glossy mediocrity, but every few minutes Mr. McCormack shows up and says something ... and it feels like Will & Grace all over again.”

In Twitter, kimzolciakswig wrote, “It started off poorly, but 'Who Is Clark Rockefeller?' gained momentum. Lifetime did a great job. I was kept in suspense.”

Mark Perigard of Boston Herald, on the other hand, quipped “This telefilm written by Edithe Swensen and directed by Mikael Salomon can’t answer the question the title begs. It instead tries to address a more fundamental question: How could a woman so smart be so dumb when it comes to a man?”

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