Is Last Seen Based on a True Story?

In Apple TV’s ‘Last Seen,’ a father’s search for his missing daughter intensifies after he gets a phone call from a mysterious person who claims to be hers. The focus is on a police dispatcher named Ian Ridley, whose three-year-old daughter, Mags, went missing eleven years ago. A recent discovery of human remains in the nearby woods brings him to the verge of accepting that his daughter is dead. But then, he picks up a distress call from a girl who claims to be Mags. This sends Ian down a road that leads to the uncovering of some shocking truths. Developed for the screen by Kris Mrksa, the mystery thriller series evokes an unsettlingly real feeling for the audience, putting them in the protagonist’s shoes and making them wonder what they would do in his place. SPOILERS AHEAD.

A Job Application Stirred the Idea for the Dispatcher’s Story

‘Last Seen’ is a fictional story based on the 2011 novel, ‘The Dispatcher’ by Ryan David Jahn. It is adapted for the screen by Kris Mrksa, who also serves as the show’s executive producer. While Jahn was not inspired by a real-life person or event, the idea for the story came to him from a personal experience. He recalled the events of May 2009, when he had been in a tough financial spot. He had been looking for a job for a while, but after failing to land anything relevant to his experience, he cast a wider net and started applying for roles that otherwise wouldn’t have been part of his profile. In the midst of this, he discovered that the Los Angeles Police Department was hiring police dispatchers.

The author saw it as a perfect job for himself. To begin with, it came with good pay and benefits. At the same time, Jahn thought answering all those emergency calls was bound to bring him some interesting material which he could use for his writing. So, he filled out the application and was called in for an aptitude test. Jahn noted that the test required applicants to remember intricate details, combinations of numbers and letters, and even identify different voices in a recording. Eventually, he didn’t get the job, but the application process did give him intriguing insight into the day-to-day work of a police dispatcher. He started to wonder what kind of calls the dispatcher might pick up at all times of the day.

At the same time, he thought about the person on the other end of the call, the one in desperate need of help during what could be the worst time of their life. Extrapolating from this, Jahn thought about a situation where he would pick up a distress call from his wife while their house was being robbed. The idea of having a family member in distress and not being able to help them terrified him. Over time, as he played with this idea in his head, he landed on the premise of a dispatcher receiving a call from his daughter, who had been missing for so many years that she was legally declared dead.

The Location Becomes a Central Element of the Mystery

Since Ryan David Jahn was living in Los Angeles at the time, he decided to set the story there. However, after writing the opening scene four or five times, he concluded that the setting was too expansive for the story. He needed to scale down to the point that the dispatcher picking up a call from the girl he believes his daughter wouldn’t feel too coincidental. With so many police dispatchers working in a city like LA, it seemed unbelievable that the call would go to the right man at the right time. However, it would be more believable in a small town, so he created a fictional town in Texas modeled on one he’d lived in as a child.

The small-town setting worked perfectly with the story’s mysterious nature. When Kris Mrksa was tasked with adapting it for the screen, he thought about shifting the setting to the UK. However, after much consideration, it was decided that a small Australian town would work better. The scale of the country brought more believability to certain aspects of the story. When the actors came on board, they brought their own sensibilities to the characters, infusing them with a raw realism that allows the audience to connect with and empathize with them on a deeply emotional level, despite their fictional origins.

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