{"id":202047,"date":"2025-10-04T18:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T18:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/202047\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T18:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T18:54:09","slug":"how-charlie-hunnam-transformed-as-ed-gein-sarah-paulsons-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/202047\/","title":{"rendered":"How Charlie Hunnam Transformed as Ed Gein, Sarah Paulson\u2019s Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains some spoilers from Monster: The Ed Gein Story<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s fall, so that means another season of Monster<\/a> from Ryan Murphy<\/a> and Ian Brennan<\/a>\u2018s anthology series is upon us, and this time, the horror series follows the life of the infamous serial killer of the 1950s, Ed Gein, who inspired classic horror films Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the show to land, everything falls on the performance of its title character, played by Charlie Hunnam<\/a>. To step into the world of Ed, and try to understand him, the Sons of Anarchy star spent months researching the murderer to do his role justice and \u201cnot glamorize\u201d the horrific things Ed is known for, such as murdering women, wearing their faces and digging up graves.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI read every single book that had been written about him, and there was a lot of books. I read all of the court transcriptions, all of his medical records. And then I read the scripts over and over to understand what would drive a human being to do some of the pretty wild things he did \u2014 pretty despicable acts,\u201d Hunnam told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week at the series\u2019 New York City premiere. \u201cWe were really very serious about trying to understand the man and not just sensationalize this, and certainly not glamorize it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile preparing for the role, he said he didn\u2019t seek out advice from Evan Peters, who starred as Jeffrey Dahmer in the first season of Monster, because they had never crossed paths. Instead, he found help from another American Horror Story<\/a> veteran.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve never met Evan Peters. I\u2019m an enormous fan of his work. I would love to get to meet him, but I never had an opportunity to. I did bump into Sarah Paulson<\/a>, who\u2019s worked with Ryan Murphy a lot and tackled some pretty dark characters and she\u2019s an old friend of mine from way back in the day,\u201d Hunnam said. \u201cSo I asked her advice about navigating it and she was really kind and basically said, \u2018Challenge yourself. Don\u2019t be afraid. It\u2019s inside you, just look deep and find it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series kicks off with viewers seeing Ed kill his brother Henry (Hudson Oz), but not realizing it until later because of his undiagnosed schizophrenia, where he imagines he\u2019s talking to his brother \u2014 after he just murdered him. Once his mother, Augusta (Laurie Metcalf) finds out her son is dead, she has a stroke and later dies. All of this leads to becoming secluded in Plainfield, Wisconsin, where the murders ramp up. As Hunnam describes, \u201cIt\u2019s really about mental health and the consequences of abuse and isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis dedication to portraying Ed was praised by co-star Suzanna Son, who plays Ed\u2019s love interest in the show, the very morbidly curious Adeline Watkins. \u201cWhat a gift to work alongside Charlie. He was in character, I would say 80 percent of the time, and that made my job all the easier because he\u2019s building the world for me to live in,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\n\tTyler Jacob Moore, who portrays the real-life Sheriff Schley who arrested Ed in 1957, added, \u201cThe first day was shocking. It never got easier to deal with him as Ed, because he was Ed when he was on set \u2014 the voice, his demeanor,\u201d Moore told THR. \u201cI was just genuinely shocked. Him being Ed in those moments was horrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSimilarly, Brennan also told THR about how Hunnam brought \u201ca deep sense of care\u201d for the character. \u201cFrom the very first time I sat down with him, I was like, \u2018This guy is attacking it from the right angle.\u2019 He was very much not interested in just playing a villain or a goul. He really wanted to find the person beneath all this illness,\u201d Brennan said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a spectacular performance. There\u2019s a moment in episode seven, which was just one take, and it completely makes the whole show.\u201d While it wasn\u2019t clear what exact scene Brennan was referring to, there is a pivotal moment in episode seven where Ed is finally diagnosed with schizophrenia and gets medicated.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrennan (co-creator of Glee, Scream Queens, Hollywood, The Watcher), who wrote all the episodes and co-directed it with Max Winkler, previously told THR<\/a> in an interview published in August that this season of Monster was the one he was most impressed with creating. \u201cIt\u2019s a really rich, very weird, extremely upsetting, very emotional, deeply funny season of television. I think it\u2019s the most impressive season of television that I\u2019ve ever been involved in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll eight episodes of Monster: The Ed Gein Story<\/a> are now streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains some spoilers from Monster: The Ed Gein Story.] It\u2019s fall, so that means another season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[116358,74303,88,74304,74305,116359,11494,7756],"class_list":["post-202047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-american-horror-story","tag-charlie-hunnam","tag-entertainment","tag-ian-brennan","tag-monster-the-ed-gein-story","tag-netlfix","tag-ryan-murphy","tag-sarah-paulson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}