The Watcher 's Christopher McDonald Admits He 'Would've Left Sooner' If He Were in the Broaddus Family's Shoes
Kevin Winter/Getty The Watcher's Christopher McDonald Admits He 'Would've Left Sooner' If He Were in the Brannock Family's Shoes
Christopher McDonald stars as Detective Rourke Chamberlain on the true crime series The Watcher, but he wouldn't want to be in the real-life situation of the Broaddus family.
Co-created by American Horror Story mastermind Ryan Murphy and creative partner Ian Brennan, the Netflix show follows Derek and Maria Broaddus as they dealt with ominous letters from a neighbor calling himself "The Watcher" after moving to a new neighborhood in 2014.
The 67-year-old actor told PEOPLE at the show's New York City premiere that he would have put the house up for sale if he was put in the couple's shoes.
"I would've left sooner personally," he shares. "I would've left town and sold the house."
Eric Liebowitz/Netflix The Watcher's Christopher McDonald Admits He 'Would've Left Sooner' If He Were in the Brannock Family's Shoes
According to The Cut, the Broaddus family bought a second home in Westfield, New Jersey, using an LLC to keep the location private. In 2019, they was finally able to rid themselves of 657 Boulevard when they sold the home at a loss for approximately $959,000, according to Zillow.
McDonald admits that he's had to deal with some scary situations in his own life.
"There have been little things," he reveals. "A couple of fans get a little bit too crazy and they show up and you go, 'No, we got to stop doing this and I mean it.' You gotta put your foot down a little bit."
"But, that doesn't happen very often," he adds. "It used to happen a lot more."
Eric Liebowitz/Netflix The Watcher's Christopher McDonald Admits He 'Would've Left Sooner' If He Were in the Brannock Family's Shoes
RELATED: The Watcher: What's Real and What's Not in Netflix Series
Playing a detective on The Watcher — which is based upon a story originally shared in a 2018 New York magazine article — made McDonald break out his own investigative skills to try to figure out who the stalker could be.
"I mean we're all kind of trying to figure it out because it's one of those stories that doesn't really have that clear answer," he says. "It could be a lot of different people that people are going to see in the episodes. So they kind of look around and they see the telltale signs and, as a detective, this guy went through this all and so I hope he'll be happy with it."
However, McDonald refrained from reaching out to the Broaddus family or Detective Chamberlain before taking on the part, saying, "I didn't want to actually because I don't know if they wanted to and I didn't want to push the issue. Nor did I talk to the detective. So I just had the book as my source and the script."
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up to date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Streaming now on Netflix, The Watcher is part of an overall deal Murphy and Brennan made with the streamer that also led to them producing Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
