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Charlie Hunnam plays infamous murderer and grave robber Ed Gein in the latest iteration of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series, Monster: The Ed Gein Story
After filming wrapped, Hunnam, 45, visited Gein’s grave in Wisconsin as a means of letting go of his dark story and moving forward
Monster: The Ed Gein Story premieres Oct. 3 on Netflix
Charlie Hunnam has revealed how he let go of Ed Gein’s disturbing life story after filming wrapped on Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
Hunnam, 45, plays the infamous murderer and grave robber in the latest iteration of Ryan Murphy‘s Monster anthology series, which drops Oct. 3 on Netflix. He described Gein as “a very culturally influential person who you’ve never really heard of” during a Sept. 30 appearance on the Today show.
Filming began on the series last fall, and Hunnam said that his longtime girlfriend, Morgana McNelis, told him, “Take some time after you finish, because when you come home, you should be ready to see me.”
“I’d been shooting in Chicago, I decided to stay for a week and sort of decompress so I was ready to see her when I got home,” Hunnam said. “And it was about an 8-hour drive up to Wisconsin from where I was to where Ed grew up and where he’s buried.”
The actor thought it would be a “good conclusion to go visit his grave and say what I wanted to say to him” as a means of letting go of the role and the story.
Courtesy Of Netflix
Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein in ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’
At his grave, he told Gein, who died in 1984, that he “hoped we had told his story honestly at the very least, and [I] didn’t invite him to come on the journey with me moving forward.”
“I was ready to say goodbye to him and that be the end,” Hunnam admitted.
During the Today show interview, the Sons of Anarchy star reflected on how this season of Monster explores the “huge cultural influence” Gein’s life had on cinema. “We sort of go back and look at the inspiration behind the inspiration for those films.”
“I mean, prior to Ed Gein, our relationships with monsters in cinema were like Dracula, Frankenstein and werewolves, and Pyscho was the pivot point where we became the monsters, and that was all of a direct consequence of the influence that Ed Gein had.”
Courtesy Of Netflix
Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein and Suzanna Son as Adelina in ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’
He continued of the series’ goal, “That’s one of the primary questions we ask in the show is, who is the monster? This boy who did terrible things but had been abused and left in isolation with untreated mental health issues, or this legion of filmmakers that took inspiration from his life and sensationalized it for entertainment, and arguably darkened the American psyche in the process?”
Hunnam previously admitted that he had “nightmares” before he started filming on the show, as he worried he’d “made a horrible mistake when I started doing my research and realizing just how despicable some of the stuff he did was.”
“But you know, we tell a very, sort of, varied version, like an all-encompassing version of who he was,” the actor told Variety. “So the gruesomeness, but there’s also a little bit of, I don’t want to say tenderness, but you see the human in him.”
Hunnam went as far as to call Gein “one of the more gentle monsters,” as he said he had a “gentle side to him.”
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Monster: The Ed Gein Story premieres Friday, Oct. 3, on Netflix.
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