Charlie Hunnam went six feet under to “meet” Ed Gein
Ed Gein remains one of the most evil – and depicted – serial killers in pop culture history. We’re talking Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs, inarguably three of the greatest and most influential horror films ever. And while Anthony Perkins, Gunnar Hansen and Ted Levine all had unique and memorable ways of approaching versions of the Butcher of Plainfield, only Charlie Hunnam got close to Ed Gein’s grave…
Charlie Hunnam got enough into character as Ed Gein that he knew it would be good for his state to let go and leave the role behind. Recently appearing on Today, Hunnam remembered, “I’d been shooting in Chicago, I decided to stay for a week and sort of decompress so I was ready to see [my girlfriend. when I got home. And it was about an eight-hour drive up to Wisconsin from where I was to where Ed grew up and where he’s buried. So I thought it would be good…a good conclusion to go visit his grave and say what I wanted to say to him. Basically that I hoped we had told his story honestly at the very least, and didn’t invite him to come on the journey with me moving forward. I was ready to say goodbye to him and that be the end.”
So how committed to playing Ed Gein was Charlie Hunnam exactly? Sure, he may not have made lamp shades out of human skin, but he did startle Monster: The Ed Gein Story director Max Winkler quite a bit. As Winkler told Entertainment Weekly, “What freaks me out now is being with Charlie now and understanding just how much weight he had lost, because you get used to it with him every day in the freezing cold of Chicago, or in a studio here in Los Angeles. And we filmed it over five or six months. So at a certain point, you only know what you see in front of you, which is that he’s not eating and he’s losing more and more weight. And now when I’m around him, I’m like, holy f*cking sh*t. And he has his hair and his beard and his muscles back. I’m like, what the f*ck? I cannot believe that you put yourself through that.” The question now is, did Hunnam have to hold his pants up with a belt made of nipples?
Monster: The Ed Gein Story hits Netflix on October 3rd as the third season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series, following those that traced serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and siblings Lyle and Erik Menendez.
Are you going to watch Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein? What do you think remains the best interpretation of the infamous killer?
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