Now that Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has established itself as one of the year’s most-watched series, discussions about why the true crime genre fascinates us so much have resurfaced. In order to talk about the series and its impact, Netflix sat series creator Ryan Murphy along with the cast members, and they had a lengthy conversation about production, their performances, and the anthology series’ reception.
A lot of the conversation is, of course, focused on Emmy winner Evan Peters’ chilling performance as the title character, a convicted serial killer who managed to commit crimes mostly undetected and assassinate 17 young men across several years before being arrested. Peters has a lot to say about his own performance, which demanded a lot of him – physically: The actor reveals he wore lead weights in his arms during filming, due to the fact that Dahmer didn’t move his arms when he walked. Peters also revealed he needed to “decompress” after every day of filming, since his preparation involved listening to Dahmer’s interviews in order to get into the serial killer’s state of mind and copy his speech pattern.
Ryan Murphy Reveals How Many Actors Tested for Monster - Dahmer
The conversation also has Murphy stating that, even though he always felt like Peters was the right choice for the role – the pair has worked together on several seasons of horror show American Horror Story –, he went on to audition “about 100 people.” This isn’t the type of role you can cast unless you are 200% sure that the actor will be able to handle, which includes dealing with it psychologically and facing the unavoidable backlash that comes after it premieres due to the subject matter.
Ryan also extended the casting talk to Penelope Ann Miller and Molly Ringwald, and revealed he knew they’d get the role within minutes of their auditions. In addition, the showrunner revealed he wrote the character of Glenda Cleveland with four-time Emmy nominee Niecy Nash in mind. The actor talked about the importance of the character, since Black women’s voices tend to go unheard, and did even more so during the 80s and 90s.
Monster Performance Signals at Bright Future for New Anthology Series
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has already been renewed for two more seasons by Netflix. It will be an anthology series, though, with every batch of episodes centering around different serial killers who are yet to be revealed. Netflix refers to Season 1 as "record-breaking," and the numbers seem to confirm it. According to the streamer itself, the first season of the series is projected to reach the landmark number of one billion view hours by the end of the year. So far, the show has accumulated over 900 million view hours, which makes it one of the most-watched English-language shows to premiere on the streamer ever.
You can watch the full roundtable conversation below: