Crafting a new season of Ryan Murphy’s hit show Monster is never easy. From poring over tons of research to landing the plane with a satisfying finale, Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan normally have their hands full. There is, however, one thing that makes everything a little easier: casting. Everything tends to fall into place once they find the right actors for the story.
That was especially true for the anthology series’ latest installment, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, because there was only one person they had in mind for the leading role: Charlie Hunnam. The question, though, was whether or not the Sons of Anarchy and Crimson Peak actor would be game for the season’s chilling role.
“It was the easiest “yes” I think, I’ve ever gotten in my career,” says Murphy, who thought Hunnam was perfect for the part after seeing a paparazzi photo of him. “I was like, ‘Oh, he seems haunted.’ There was something very Ed about him on that day.”
In Monster: The Ed Gein Story, now streaming, Hunnam takes on the role of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein — an obscure subject whose influence nevertheless stretches throughout the 20th century. “I knew very little about Ed,” Hunnam tells Tudum. “I knew that there was a man who was regarded as the original serial killer, who had been active in sort of post–Second World War America, rural Midwestern America. And that he had something of an unhealthy relationship with his mother. That was really the extent of what I knew.”
Hunnam was about to learn quite a bit more. About Gein, about his crimes, and about the troubled history that led an unassuming man to become the “Butcher of Plainfield.” He’s joined by a cast of talented performers who play victims, influences, and even Hollywood legends. Read on to meet them all.
Yes. Monster: The Ed Gein Story is inspired by the life of the real Ed Gein, who was active in his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, from 1947 to 1957. The series also examines his influence on pop culture, from Psycho to Mindhunter. “Ed Gein’s fairly obscure,” Brennan says. “You take the facts and the things that happened and then just try to get in the guy’s head and try to figure out, ‘OK, if that is true, what else is true? What does this world look like?’ ”
Ed Gein is an unassuming young man living with his mother in rural Wisconsin in the 1940s. He’s also the Butcher of Plainfield, a serial killer and grave robber who would inspire generations of killers in real life and onscreen.
For Hunnam, playing Ed was a formidable challenge. “The more I got into learning about Ed, the more it became clear how big the distance was between who I am in my regular life and who Ed was,” Hunnam says. That meant transforming physically — Hunnam lost more than 30 pounds to capture Gein’s lithe physicality — as well as emotionally.
Everything came together when Hunnam realized something crucial about his subject: Gein himself was playing a character. “It was an affectation,” Hunnam says of Gein’s distinctive soft and high-pitched voice. “It was what Ed thought that his mother wanted him to be. It wasn’t an authentic voice that lived in him. It was this persona.” Hunnam playing Gein playing … something else.
While shooting the season, Murphy was surprised that Hunnam never objected to any of the difficult and boundary-pushing material he was given in the scripts. “I’ve never had this experience with any other actor I’ve worked with,” says Murphy. “When Ian and I were working on the scripts, there were many times where I was like, ‘I don’t think Charlie will do this. I think it’s too dark. I think it’s too scary. I don’t think I could do it.’ I was so impressed with [Hunnam] because once [he] signed on, he never called me about any scene. [He] did everything that we wrote.”
Sons of Anarchy, Crimson Peak, Children of Men, The Lost City of Z, Shantaram
Augusta Gein is Ed’s domineering mother — in some ways, as influential as her notorious child. It was Ed’s relationship with Augusta that served as the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
Laurie Metcalf was the only choice to play Augusta. “I grew up in Chicago doing theater, so that’s as close to a theater goddess actually exists in real life,” Brennan says. “It makes your job so much easier when you get somebody like her.
Augusta’s love for her son is bound up in disappointment and deep, cruel shame. “In her more hostile, vile moments she would tell him, ‘I should have castrated you at birth,’ ” Hunnam says. The kind of treatment only a son could love.
Lady Bird, Scream 2, JFK, Roseanne, onstage in A Doll’s House, Part 2 and Three Tall Women
Adeline, a young woman who feels as trapped as Ed does, is his only companion on the cold wastes of Plainfield. She’s also obsessed with death, and introduces him to several of the killers who would serve as his idols.
Red Rocket breakout Suzanna Son plays Adeline, a woman who is, in her own way, as disturbed as Ed is. “Certain images and certain ideas, once you see them, you can’t unsee them,” Brennan says. “When Ed chose Adeline, they show each other these things. They can’t unsee them. And slowly begin this descent into darker and darker stuff.”
“Adeline is really the only female, or really the only person other than his mother, that he has a consistent and somewhat intimate relationship with,” Hunnam says. “He finds this kindred spirit in Adeline.” Whether that helps or hurts is up to interpretation.
Red Rocket, The Idol
Alfred Hitchcock is the master of suspense, the great English filmmaker who made classic films like Rear Window, Vertigo, Notorious, and many more. He’s also the director of Psycho, the genre-defining horror masterpiece that was inspired by Gein’s crimes.
Played by British screen fixture Tom Hollander, Hitchcock is the center of one of Monster’s most surprising subplots: Gein’s influence on Hollywood cinema. It’s what drew the Monster team to Gein as a subject. “There’s something about this story that has really echoed down the ages, just thinking about how influential he was on movies,” Brennan says. “That’s when it sort of clicked and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s how we do it.’ ”
Pride & Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, About Time, In the Loop, Gosford Park, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans
Olivia Williams plays Alma Reville, the screenwriter and editor who was married to Alfred Hitchcock from 1926 until his death in 1980. She co-wrote several of her husband’s films, including Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, and The Lady Vanishes.
Rushmore, The Sixth Sense, Peter Pan, Anna Karenina, The Father, An Education, Hanna
Vicky Krieps plays Ilse Koch, the Nazi “Beast of Buchenwald” who served as a perverse inspiration for Gein’s use of human bodies. Koch died in prison; in Monster, she appears only in Gein’s fantasies.
Old, Hanna, Bergman Island, Corsage, A Most Wanted Man, Hold Me Tight
Oscar nominee Lesley Manville plays Bernice Worden, one of the women of Plainfield who is also the object of Ed’s obsession.
Queer, Another Year, Maleficent, Secrets & Lies, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Mr. Turner, Vera Drake
Addison Rae plays Evelyn, a babysitter in Plainfield with whom Ed becomes obsessed.
He’s All That, Thanksgiving, on stage and streaming as a musical artist
Joey Pollari plays Anthony Perkins, the young actor who would take on the role of Norman Bates in Psycho.
American Crime; The Inbetweeners; Love, Simon
Charlie Hall plays Deputy Worden, Bernice’s son and a police officer in Plainfield.
The Sex Lives of College Girls; Single Drunk Female; Love, Victor; Sweethearts
Tyler Jacob Moore plays Plainfield’s head law enforcement officer.
SEAL Team, Perry Mason, Shameless, Barry
Mimi Kennedy plays Dr. Mildred Newman, a sanatorium official.
Dharma & Greg, Mom, In the Loop, Midnight in Paris, Erin Brockovich, Homefront
Will Brill plays Tobe Hooper, the director and co-writer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, another film that took inspiration from Ed’s crimes.
Caught Stealing, Slice, Fellow Travelers, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, on stage in Stereophonic and Act One
Robin Weigert plays Enid Watkins, Adeline’s long-suffering mother.
Deadwood, Big Little Lies, Sons of Anarchy, Concussion, Angels in America
