Evan Peters and Ryan Murphy revealed that the actor stayed in character as Jeffrey Dahmer for “months” in preparation for his role in the Netflix series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
During a recent panel, Peters stated that he was on the fence about taking on the role because he “knew it was going to be incredibly dark and an incredible challenge.” After receiving the scripts, the 35-year-old revealed that he watched the serial killer’s 1994 Dateline interview to “dive into the psychology of that extreme side of human behavior” with Murphy adding that Peters would wear lead weights around his arms and lifts in his shoes to emulate Dahmer’s physicality during the four months of preparation and six months of shooting. Murphy stated that he “basically stayed in this character, as difficult as it was, for months.”
Evans went into greater detail about Dahmer, noting, “He has a very straight back. He doesn’t move his arms when he walks, so I put weights on my arms to see what that felt like. I wore the character shoes with lifts in them, his jeans, his glasses, I had a cigarette in my hand at all times.”
He also said he watched a lot of Dahmer footage and worked with a dialect coach to really nail the character. “The way that he spoke, it was very distinct and he had a dialect. So I also went off and created this 45-minute audio composite, which was very helpful. I listened to that every day, in hopes of learning his speech patterns, but really, in an attempt to try to get into his mindset and understand that each day that we were shooting. It was an exhaustive search, trying to find private moments, times where he didn’t seem self conscious, so you could get a glimpse into how he behaved prior to these interviews and being in prison.”
