Actor Charlie Hunnam has defended his depiction of Ed Gein in Netflix’s new Monster: The Ed Gein Story series after it received show after Ed Gein depiction received backlash.
The new show has pulled in over 12 million viewers and is the latest in the true crime horror anthology by Netflix, with the first two covering the story of Jeffrey Dahmer and the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez.
Both previous shows, which were co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, were criticized for the sensational portrayal of true life horror stories.
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Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Hunnam was asked what he hopes conversations around the show will be about.
He replied: “If people are compelled to talk about it and think about it, hopefully they’ll actually be compelled to watch the show.
“What I would hope and feel really confident in is that it was a very sincere exploration of the human condition and why this boy did what he did.”
Hunnam went on to say: “I never felt like we were sensationalizing it. I never felt on set that we did anything gratuitous or for shock impact. It was all in order to try to tell this story as honestly as we could.”
Gein, who became known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, confessed to killing two women in the 1950s as well as exhuming corpses from local graveyards and using their bones and skin to create keepsakes.
Hunnam said: “Is it Ed Gein who was abused and left in isolation and suffering from undiagnosed mental illness and...that manifested in some pretty horrendous ways?
“Or was the monster the legion of filmmakers that took inspiration from his life and sensationalized it to make entertainment and darken the American psyche in the process?
“Is Ed Gein the monster of this show, or is Hitchcock the monster of the show? Or are we the monster of the show because we’re watching it?”
Hunnam had previously spoken to Entertainment Weekly where he shared that he doesn’t actually like the ‘horror genre’ or ‘impossibly dark, bleak stories’ all that much so the role of Gein was ‘kind of a strange choice’.
He explained: “I just found myself saying yes. Based, I would say like 99% of it, on just how much I liked Ryan.”
He added: “I think I learned the truth of like, that which you most need to find is where you least wish to look - you know, the greater the challenge, the greater the reward.”