A Long Way From Home in ‘Waco’ : Television: Playing the sister-in-law of Branch Davidian leader David Koresh was a dramatic change for a Laguna Hills teen.

She has played the lead in “Annie” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and Dorothy in a musical “Wizard of Oz” on stage in San Diego and Pasadena, but in her first role in a major TV movie, Adrienne Stiefel finds she’s not in Kansas anymore.

The Laguna Hills teen plays one of the Branch Davidian cult members under the sway of David Koresh (played by Tim Daly of “Wings”) in “In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco,” which airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on NBC. The role represents a change in direction for Stiefel, a 15-year-old Mission Viejo High School student.

“I’ve done dramas on stage, but in terms of dramatic work, this was really extreme because you can’t really get much more dramatic than this story line,” Stiefel said in an interview at her home.

After her success in stage musicals, Stiefel has concentrated recently on pursuing film and television roles. The “Ambush in Waco” part came about suddenly, a reflection of the push to get the TV movie on screen as quickly as possible; she read for the part about a month after the initial Feb. 28 raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, while the standoff between the ATF and the Davidians was still going on. (The movie ends with the Feb. 28 raid.)

“I went in and interviewed on Friday, they invited me to do it on Monday, I went into the recording studio on Tuesday and flew to Oklahoma on Thursday,” Stiefel said. She was on location from April 8 to 29 in Tulsa, where a replica of the Waco compound was built.

The real compound burned to the ground April 19, immolating 77 cult members inside, including the 17-year-old on whom Stiefel’s character is based.

“We were out there on the set (when) we heard that there was a fire at the compound,” Stiefel said. “Everybody was sitting by the TV, and if you just looked around the room at the faces, it was really sad. We all felt like we were in mourning.

“As an actor you grow attached to the character you are playing, and then when suddenly it’s gone, when before it was there, it’s weird. It’s like your whole being is gone. Everybody felt that way. It was really traumatic.”

Real-life tragedies such as the Waco disaster have become fodder for increasingly intense competition between networks looking for TV movie material, putting filmmakers in the position of having to defend themselves against charges of exploitation. Stiefel said that, from her observations, the writers and producers took pains to be as sensitive and accurate as possible.

The movie shifts in point of view between ATF agents and the cult members within the compound. Stiefel plays the younger sister of Koresh’s first (and legal) wife. Her biggest scenes come near the beginning of the movie, including the film’s opening segment, in which she sings with Daly (playing Koresh) in a California recording studio. The musical aspect of her role was a last-minute addition.

“When I read for the role, I didn’t know there was any singing in it--and I don’t think there was,” Stiefel said. “I guess they could tell from my resume that I could sing, so they decided to put me in there.”

Her other big moment is a disturbing scene in which Koresh seduces Stiefel’s character, then 14, with the line that “God has told me to give you my seed.” It presages his future predilection for sleeping with numerous women and young girls, in the Waco compound, all with the understanding that he is fulfilling God’s wishes.

Stiefel calls it “the scene” with a nervous laugh, tracing the quotation marks with her fingers. It was scheduled for her second day of shooting but was continually pushed back until almost the end of her three-week stay.

“I thought it would be (difficult) at first. I was really scared,” Stiefel said “Then, once I got to know Tim (Daly), I thought, oh great, now I’m going to laugh,” because the two had developing a joking relationship.

In the end, though, “it was not as big a deal as it seemed to be, not at all. It was just like any other scene. . . . Everything’s so professional; everything’s handled so well.”

For the climactic raid sequence, Stiefel found herself running through a room with small explosives, simulating gunfire, going off all around her.

“It was funny because the director was telling the little kids, ‘You’re supposed to looked scared in this; don’t have a smile on your face,’ ” Stiefel recalled. “Guns are going off, things are blowing up in my face--I don’t think there was any acting there, no acting whatsoever. Everyone was in sheer terror.”

The inferno at the actual Waco compound was not the only tragedy to affect shooting. On April 24, a tornado struck Tulsa, killing 10 people. The cast and crew of the movie had to wait it out in the basement of the compound set, but the tornado did not come near the shooting location.

Despite the physical and emotional trials of the shoot, Stiefel said she feels she came away with a better understanding of the lives of the cult members who perished in the blaze.

“It’s strange. When you hear about these cult members, you don’t have any faces for these people, any names or anything. Then when you have the script, you get to know all these people, and each person becomes real.”