{"id":876500,"date":"2026-10-09T16:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T16:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876500\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T16:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T16:36:10","slug":"rory-culkin-tees-up-the-frights-of-apple-tvs-nocturne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876500\/","title":{"rendered":"Rory Culkin tees up the frights of Apple TV’s Nocturne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pop culture has some unforgettable fictional serial killers: Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, Patrick Bateman. Arriving in time for Halloween, Apple TV\u2019s disturbing new thriller Nocturne aims to add to that lineup with the vicious Jurek Walters (Stephen Graham<\/a>). In this Silence Of The Lambs-meets-Mare Of Easttown series, Jurek is locked up in a psychiatric facility in the small town of Fairhaven, PA. But even behind bars in solitary confinement, Jurek\u2019s haunting smile and calculating behavior make him highly dangerous, especially to his new caretaker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first target of Jurek\u2019s devious tactics in Nocturne is the naive, kindhearted Karl (Rory Culkin), who gets a promotion\u2014or demotion, depending on whom you ask\u2014when he\u2019s put in charge of the notorious killer\u2019s daily medication and food. As Karl gradually befriends Jurek, he doesn\u2019t realize how much he\u2019s being manipulated by the maniac. Created by 28 Weeks Later screenwriter Rowan Joff\u00e9, the show revels in the tension of whether Jurek might hurt Karl, or whether he merely pities the guy. Nocturne\u2019s escalations drive a striking performance from Culkin, who tells The A.V. Club that it wasn\u2019t merely an \u201cintriguing script\u201d that attracted him to the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people were what drew me in before I even got into the creative side.\u201d Those people include not only Joff\u00e9 and Adolescence<\/a> writer-star Graham but also Emmy-winning director Tim Van Patten and Ray Donovan himself, Liev Schreiber.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Culkin, who previously starred in Waco<\/a> and Castle Rock, adds that Nocturne presented a uniquely different challenge. To him, Karl is distinct from, say, Under The Banner Of Heaven\u2018s religious zealot Samuel Lafferty. \u201cThat guy was off his rockers, so it\u2019s nice to be on the other side in Nocturne and be the one looking madness in the eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

Created by Joff\u00e9 and showrunner John Hlavin, Nocturne is based on the 10-book Joona Linna series by Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, the husband-wife duo who publish under the pseudonym Lars Kepler. Relocating the action from Scandinavia to Pennsylvania, Nocturne casts Schreiber as former Philadelphia homicide detective Jonah Lynn, who helped put Jurek behind bars\u2014but at great personal cost. Now, Jonah is roped into a chilling new case, and all the signs pointing to Jurek as the culprit. But how is that possible, with Jurek imprisoned and under constant surveillance? The cop and the killer have it out for each other, two obsessive men now linked by Karl.<\/p>\n

As he tiptoes around Jurek to help solve the mystery of a missing girl, Karl is stuck between Jurek and the FBI agents who want the truth. \u201cMy initial instinct about playing Karl was to be as pure as possible,\u201d Culkin teases, \u201cbecause the show explores how aware Karl might be of his purity. Is it something he\u2019s proud of, or does he want to play around with it because Karl is clearly fascinated by Jurek. Maybe it\u2019s because he has a mundane life or doesn\u2019t have time for himself? But being assigned to care for Jurek feels special to him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Culkin compares the dynamic between his and Graham\u2019s characters to someone tending to a beautiful, predatoratory animal: \u201cIf it got its paws on me, I would be in a lot of trouble. So for Karl, this job is like being an awful piece of history. It\u2019s like, what if your friend\u2019s uncle was tasked to care for Jeffrey Dahmer? Isn\u2019t it an interesting thing?\u201d The Scream 4 actor adds there were plenty of behind-the-scenes discussions to make sure he, Graham, and Van Patten were on the same page, particularly\u00a0 when Karl and Jurek are in the same room together. \u201cMost of our scenes are through a small window,\u201d Culkin says, as seen in the exclusive The A.V. Club image above.\u00a0\u201cBut we wanted to keep building the suspense of Karl\u2019s safety,\u201d he adds, referring to when Jurek briefly manages to get his hands on Karl in the tense series premiere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Culkin shares most of his scenes with Graham, their characters\u2019 particular circumstances largely keeping him from appearing opposite Schreiber and co-stars Zazie Beetz, Poorna Jagannathan, and Bill Camp as often as he would like. Beetz plays Saga Bauer, an undercover FBI agent who infiltrates the Riverside Psychiatric Facility hoping to get Jurek to warm up to her. Jagannathan portrays determined FBI head honcho Quinn, and Camp is Sheriff Ellison; both team up with Jonah and Saga to bring Jurek down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When The A.V. Club spoke to Jagannathan<\/a> last month, the Lanterns<\/a> star called Nocturne \u201ca horrifying, scary thriller\u201d whose source material was so frightening, she couldn\u2019t sleep after reading it. Was it the same for Culkin? The actor looked to the books to get a sense of the bigger Nocturne picture, and says what he found there was extremely terrifying. \u201cBut I also wanted to go into the show selfishly and only worry about Karl and Jurek, so it doesn\u2019t feel like Karl knows what\u2019s going on outside of Riverside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Culkin emphasizes that while Karl seems straitlaced on the surface, he has his demons just like the rest of the show\u2019s protagonists. \u201cThe most interesting part of any story is the characters\u2019 motivations. And in this case, no one\u2019s motives are what they seem to be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nocturne premieres October 30 on Apple TV.<\/p>\n

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To make sure you\u2019re seeing more of our stories about Nocturne and other TV shows worth watching, add The A.V. Club as a preferred source on Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pop culture has some unforgettable fictional serial killers: Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, Patrick Bateman. Arriving in time for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,92],"class_list":["post-876500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876500","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=876500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}