A breakdown of the huge transformation Charlie Hunnam had to become creepy Ed Gein

It took months

2 hours ago

Hayley Soen | Entertainment

Charlie Hunnam had to go through a lot for his role in Monster: The Ed Gein Story on Netflix. Of course, there’s the coming into work every day and having to act out being a killer and grave robber, but he also had to undergo a huge transformation to get ready for the role beforehand.

Killer Ed Gein was active in Plainfield, Wisconsin, from 1947 to 1957. He murdered two women, and was also a grave robber. He dug up corpses from graves in his local area, and kept them in his home. Gein used skin from the bodies as masks, and made household objects out of it.

Charlie Hunnam has since spoken out about what he did to get into the role of killer Ed Gein. Here’s what he had to say.

Charlie Hunnam had a huge physical transformation to become Ed Gein

via Netflix

Charlie Hunnam put everything into becoming Ed Gein. To look as much like his character as possible, Hunnam underwent a significant physical transformation. This took place over months. “I lost almost 30 pounds just to get a more malnourished, light frame. Ed was incredibly lithe. And so that was a big part of the physicality,” Charlie Hunnam told Tudum.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about where his energy was, that he’s not particularly confident or, like, front-foot type of energy … How to not take up a lot of space, not to be sort of front and centre and too confident in my physicality was really important.”

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In a further interview with People, he added: “He [Ed Gein] had 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.”

He also went to extreme lengths to get into character

As well as the physical bits, to become Ed Gein, Charlie Hunnam read and watched everything he could on the case. This included apparently signing an NDA to access full interview transcripts with the killer, to nail the jarring voice we hear in the show. There are some real life clips of Gein talking in real life, but he wanted more.

The voice Gein had has been put down to his want to please his mother, who wanted a daughter and not a son. “It was what Ed thought that his mother wanted him to be. As she was really his only human contact in the world, he developed this thing to try and make her love him,” Charlie Hunnam said.