Evan Peters, who is 35 and has never been nominated for a Golden Globe before, talked to Variety about the internal conflict he felt when he played serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
Peters said “It was a lot of trouble.” I thought about it a lot and tried to figure it out. “I went back and forth a lot,” Peters said, adding that Murphy, 57, was the one who finally won his trust and got him to talk about such a hard topic.
Peters told Murphy, “I knew you’d be a great support system.” “I trust you, and I know you’re being honest.”
I knew you would set up a strong safety net because I wanted to finish this as strong as I had started. If I fell, I could get back up, and we could finish. I thought I could handle it.”
Peters and Murphy worked together for the first time on the first season of American Horror Story, which aired on FX in 2011. He also appeared in the first season of Murphy’s Pose, which aired in 2018.
In addition to the mental strain of playing Dahmer, Peters went through a major physical change for the role. He started by going on a no-carb, no-sugar diet to lose 15 pounds.
He said, “I really didn’t want to eat for the first few weeks of filming.” Then I was working out for episode three, in which Dahmer starts working out and ends up gaining about 20 pounds to show how he looked back then.
Peters just got his first Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a limited series, anthology series, or television motion picture for his work, but he wants to do more comedic roles in the future.
“I’m going to try something new and take a break from playing dark roles for a while. Peters said, “I think it would be interesting to play something more common so we can talk about the details of those kinds of experiences.”
