British actor Charlie Hunnam reflects on his extensive mental and physical transformation to essay real-life monster Ed Gein in the Netflix series.
Charlie Hunnam, 45, who plays American serial killer and body snatcher Ed Gein, aka the Butcher of Plainfield, in the recently released third season of Netflix’s true-crime anthology series, ‘Monster’, discussed his mental prep for the portrayal of the convicted murderer, by learning about his trauma, through books, court transcripts and medical records, in addition to the massive weight loss and physical transformation.
“Finding the truth was the whole process. We were much more interested in why Ed did what he did, rather than exploring what he did,” Hunnam said at the NYC premiere of the series. “Everybody sort of knows what he did, and it’s been chronicled in many films that he inspired and then the direct adaptation to his life.”
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“We, I think, felt confident that if we remain true to that, of just trying to find the truth in reflecting back this bizarre, tiny, dark corner of the human condition that he manifested, that we were staying true to the traditions of storytelling, which is to try to help us understand ourselves because we’re all so bizarre, even the most normal of us,” he added. “But Ed was very bizarre.”
Further addressing his physical transformation, the ‘Sons of Anarchy’ alum explained, “He’d been abused, he was left in isolation, so he had no real social context to reflect back to him, normal behaviour. And he was a very skinny, malnourished type of guy. So I mean, first of all, basically the basic first step was losing 30 pounds so I could look like him.”
The eight-part series by Ian Brennan, ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’, is now streaming on Netflix.