Here is everything Evan Peters did to mentally prepare himself for playing Jeffrey Dahmer

One thing he did was he forced himself into dark places for long periods of time

2 years ago

Evan Peters has revealed he was fearful of stepping into the role of Jeffrey Dahmer for Ryan Murphy’s newest Netflix series on the cannibal serial killer.

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has gained so much attraction since it was released. In the show Evan Peters plays Jeffrey Dahmer, a cannibal sex offender who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. As a way to tap into Jeffrey Dahmer, Ryan Murphy demanded Evan to watch the 1994 Stone Phillips interview for Dateline NBC before playing the part. Here are all the ways Evan Peters prepared himself for playing a notorious serial killer.

Evan Peters watched the Jeffrey Dahmer interview to get ready for the Netflix role

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story star Evan Peters has finally revealed how he prepared to take on the role of the notorious serial killer. Evan Peters disclosed he watched the infamous chilling interview with Stone Phillips. Evan said the whole thing was jaw-dropping and after receiving the scripts he called Ryan Murphy and said Dahmer seemed almost “regretful, guilty and confused.” In an interview with Netflix Evan said there was a sense of disorder in Jeffrey Dahmer, “he doesn’t have the winsome, devilish smile. He is alone, unfriendly, and almost detached from what he did.”

In the Jeffrey Dahmer interview on NBC with Stone Phillips, he talked a lot about his childhood, the murders and what caused him to commit his awful crimes. One of these includes Dahmer thinking back to when he argued with his dad – the interviewer asked Dahmer what was in the box and he said: “the mummified head and genitals of a young man I met.” You can watch the full chilling interview below.

Evan Peters read biographies and Dahmer’s police report too

In an interview with Netflix, Evan said he felt it was important to be respectful to the victims, to the families and to try and tell the story as authentically as he could. He said: “You need to have certain plot points because he did do these things but you don’t need to embellish them. We get it, you don’t need to see it over and over again. Honestly I was very scared about all of the things that he did and diving into that and trying to commit to hat was absolutely going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life because I wanted it to be very authentic.”

‘I had to go into really dark places for an extended period of time’

Evan told Netflix that if he wanted to play Dahmer authentically then he would have to get comfortable with going into “really dark places and staying there for an extended period of time.”

Evan also paid tribute to the crew for helping him in the process of getting into character. He said: “The crew was instrumental in keeping me on the guardrails. I cannot thank them enough, and I could not have done any of this role without them.”

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is available now on Netflix. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.