Before being chosen to play Jeffrey Dahmer, Evan Peters wanted to play “lighter” roles and had expressed his desire to Ryan Murphy: for this time, however, it failed!
It’s Ryan Murphy who admits it: Evan Peters wanted to play someone “normal” before he was finally chosen to play Jeffrey Dahmer in Netflix’s flagship series, Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
Over the past decade, Evan Peters has risen to fame for portraying challenging roles. From Tate Langdon in the first season of American Horror Story to Jeffrey Dahmer, the actor has most often played incredibly dark characters. It would have taken him “two years to recover” from his performance in American Horror Story: Cult.
20th Television Evan Peters in American Horror Story: Murder House and Cult
As Popbuzz reports, it was during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that Ryan Murphy confirmed that the young actor “wanted to play someone normal and maybe go do a romantic comedy” before the showrunner told him. offers the role of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Out of respect for Evan, Ryan Murphy first auditioned 100 people, before finally admitting that his protege was the best for the role: he then sent him the script.
Evan’s answer? Ryan reveals it.
He called me the next day and he said, ‘It’s so difficult. It’s so hard that I kind of have to say yes, even though I’m terrified of it..’
In that same interview, Evan Peters explains his process for stepping into the shoes of the serial killer, saying he read all of the killer’s books and articles as well as psychological reports, confessions and timelines “in an effort to trying to figure out why he did what he did and the struggle he had with it.”
He adds : “Then the physical character [du rôle]which I know was going to be so difficult. [Jeffrey Dahmer] has a lot of exterior things to the way he walks, he doesn’t move his arms when he walks and talks. And so I did a lot of research to watch him and see how he moved and I worked out with weights on my arms, wearing a wardrobe, all kinds of things that I carried with me throughout the day to try to stay in it, so that it becomes second nature. And then I created a 45 minute audio composite that I listened to every day to try and understand his dialect and how he spoke and really try to understand why he did what he did or what his condition was of mind.”
He was so deeply immersed in his process that his co-star Niecy Nash (Glenda Cleveland) said she didn’t really know the actor after all.
“I didn’t get to know Evan, because Evan stayed in his process“, she clarified. “I think we may have said hello twice? Because I imposed it on him… I realized, [je dois] stay in my lane because I didn’t want to disrupt your process and what you needed to do to stay where you needed to stay.”
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This isn’t the first time Evan Peters has expressed interest in doing something lighter. Speaking to W magazine in 2018, he said he was “dying” to do a comedy: “That’s where my heart really is, I think. I love physical comedy.”
He also previously admitted to GQ that he wanted to take a break from American Horror Story for his mental well-being after Apocalypse. “I’m going to take a break, regroup, decompress, reconnect with what I want to do. Not that I didn’t want to do any of those roles – that’s exactly what I wanted to do. It was just zero to 100 instantly.”
He went on to explain: “I’m clumsy, I’m silly, I like to have fun. I don’t like to shout and scream. In fact, I hate it. I think it’s disgusting and really awful and it was a challenge for me. Horror Story kind of asked me that. All of this was a huge effort for me and really hard to do. It hurts my soul and Evan as a person.”
When the comedian took his break after Apocalypse, Ryan Murphy then shared his decision with Entertainment Weekly: “He and I talked afterwards and we decided maybe it was time for some comedy.” However, the actor’s wish has not yet come true. From then on, it only remains for Ryan Murphy to write him a comedy.
While waiting to one day be able to discover Evan Peters in a completely different register, (re) discover his performance in Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story available on Netflix.