- Charlie Hunnam opened up about taking the role of infamous killer Ed Gein in Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
- Charlie initially worried he’d “made a horrible mistake” by taking the role after researching Ed Glein sent him into a panic.
- The show is currently the number 1 show on Netflix.
To no one’s surprise, Netflix's Monster: The Ed Gein Story is undoubtedly a hit. Not that anyone had any reason to doubt it, except maybe the show’s star Charlie Hunnam. In a recent interview, Charlie revealed that preparing for The Ed Gein Story sent him into a “full panic” and that he instantly regretted taking the role.
“Once I said yes to this, I thought I’d made a horrible mistake,” Charlie, who plays the infamous killer in the series, told Entertainment Weekly. “I started researching it, reading all the books about Ed Gein, and I fell into a full panic.”
The actor originally signed on to the series after a meeting with co-creator Ryan Murphy, so he had yet to read the script. All he had to go off of was Gein’s true story. “I just thought there might be no coming back from this,” he continued. “This is so dark, to inhabit this character.”
Once he got scripts from co-creator and writer Ian Brennan, Charlie said, his panic abated. “There was sort of a breakthrough when I started reading the scripts and realizing that we were not going to be focusing on what he did and doing a deep dive on that, we’re really gonna be focusing on why he did what he did and trying to find the human being behind the monster,” he said.
While he may have found grounding in the script, the actor admitted it didn’t necessarily make playing such a disturbed character any easier. “It was a really beautiful experience,” he said. “But, you know, definitely dark at times, too, and there was times when we thought, ‘How are we gonna get through the day?’”
Charlie didn’t just have to deal with how the role affected him mentally, he also underwent a physical transformation to play Ed Gein, which included quite a bit of weight loss. As director Max Winkler told EW, “Charlie really put his body and his mind through a lot on this.”
You can stream Monster: The Ed Gein Story right now on Netflix.
