The third season of Netflix’s serial-killer anthology series focuses on twisted murderer Ed Gein
It’s no secret that serial killers have become a staple of television crime dramas. From the “unsubs” of Criminal Minds to the maniacs dispatched by serial killer-dispatching murderer Dexter Morgan, viewers have a seemingly insatiable appetite for homicidal maniacs.
Producer Ryan Murphy (whose numerous series range from 9-1-1 and its sequels to American Horror Story) has tapped into the topic with the Netflix anthology series Monster, dramatizing the story of Jeffrey Dahmer in the first season, and the infamous Menendez brothers in the second.
For the third season, arriving this week, Monster journeys back even further to explore one of America’s most infamous serial killers, Ed Gein.
Gein — played in the series by former Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam — hailed from Plainfield, Wisconsin. He became notorious after his 1957 capture, when the public learned that “the butcher of Plainfield” (as the press dubbed him) had been ritually skinning his victims in order to make a suit out of human skin.
Gein’s name may not be familiar, but his crimes certainly are, providing the inspiration for Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumm in Silence of the Lambs and Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Interestingly, Gein’s influence on Hitchcock — played in Monster by Tom Hollander (who recently portrayed Truman Capote in the latest season of Murphy’s Feud series) — becomes part of the season’s narrative. “There’s something about this story that has really echoed down the ages,” Monster co-creator Ian Brennan tells Netflix’s Tudum .
Despite having his heinous crimes repeatedly dramatized onscreen, Gein himself isn’t a widely known figure. “[Gein] is probably one of the most influential people of the 20th century, and yet people don’t know that much about him,” Murphy says. “He influenced some of the biggest serial killers of the 20th century — which is another thing that I think people did not and do not know about him — Ted Bundy, and on and on and on.”
According to Brennan — who wrote every episode in the season — that was a key reason why he felt compelled to tell Gein’s story. “Ed Gein’s fairly obscure,” he says. “It’s this man who lived in a farmhouse and didn’t know very many people, and you’re watching his descent into deep, deep madness and then ultimately into killing people.”
When it came to casting Gein, Hunnam appeared on Murphy’s radar via an unlikely source. “I saw a paparazzi photograph of [Hunnam] somewhere and I was like, ‘Oh, he seems haunted.’ There was something very Ed about him on that day,” Murphy says, prompting Hunnam to deadpan, “I must have been having a bad day.”
When Hunnam began researching Gein, he was surprised by the superficiality of what he found. “I read every book that’s been written on Ed Gein, and I didn’t find many of them very useful, to be honest,” Hunnam says. “They were all sort of grossly sensationalist — these grotesque, impossibly bleak pieces of writing.”
Ultimately, Hunnam hit pay dirt when he came across a rare find. “I was able to get access to the only known recording of Ed Gein, which was made two days after he was arrested,” Hunnam reveals. “It’s about an hour-and-10-minute interview with him, while he’s in custody. A lot of the musicality, and his inflection, and his choice of words, and where his energy sat, I was able to extract from it . . . I wanted to get as close as possible to who Ed was, to do him justice, and for this thing to feel authentic.”
“The thesis statement of every season is: are monsters born or are they made?” Murphy points out. “I think in Ed’s case, it’s probably a little of both.”
To illustrate this, the series delves into Gein’s twisted relationship with his domineering mother, played by Laurie Metcalf. “I learned a lot from her and I really value getting to work with her on this,” Hunnam adds.
Ultimately, Brennan is confident that the new season will prove satisfying to fans of the series. “I think this is the best season of the three,” he says, “and I think it’s going to blow people’s socks off.”
The season premiere of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, begins streaming Friday, October 3, on Netflix