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Jason Clarke tells PEOPLE he gained 40 lbs. to play convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh in the new Hulu miniseries Murdaugh: Death in the Family<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n He says he “forced myself to eat” in order to gain the weight<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Clarke lost as much weight as he could to film the show’s final two episodes, which cover Murdaugh’s trial, and the rest gradually over time<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Jason Clarke<\/a> is opening up about the figurative and literal weight of playing Alex Murdaugh<\/a>.<\/p>\n To play the convicted murderer in the new Hulu miniseries Murdaugh: Death in the Family<\/em><\/a>, the actor, 56, tells PEOPLE he “put on 40 lbs.”<\/p>\n “I’m not a 6’5″, 265-lb. South Carolina man,” Clarke tells PEOPLE. “So, I knew I needed to put on a lot of weight. I had X amount of time and I started eating, I started working on that accent, I started falling in love with that accent. I started just forcing myself to eat and weighing myself and checking my blood pressure and seeing a cardiologist, all those things.”<\/p>\n While Clarke says he “wore a suit to add an extra bit of belly,” he didn’t want to rely on prosthetics for the role.<\/p>\n “It’s one thing to do it for a movie, but it’s another to do it for five months for an eight-part series in Atlanta,” he says. “With the shooting schedule and the amount of scenes I was in, to get it on and off and change would have been very difficult. I like to give a sense that there’s a person here, and it’s not just makeup or prosthetics.”<\/p>\n Clarke says gaining the weight to play Murdaugh \u2014 who was convicted for the 2021 murders of his wife Maggie and their son Paul<\/a> \u2014 was “a lot,” but “it solidified my commitment” to the role.<\/p>\n “This was not a part I was going to have to put a little bit in,” he says. “It was all-in, and he’s an all-in dude.”<\/p>\n Beyond the physical transformation, Clarke also had to get into Murdaugh’s mind.<\/p>\n “There was some trepidation, like, ‘Am I going to do it justice? Am I right for it? Am I going to be able to get there? How am I going to get there?’ ” he says. “I liked that it was a dramatization, and well written to get behind the headlines. The question I couldn’t get my head around was, ‘How does a man do that?’ He deceived his son and his wife to that point that they would not see it coming. It’s pretty no-nonsense, and that’s the horror.”<\/p>\n For the last two episodes, which cover Murdaugh’s trial, Clarke “dropped as much” weight as he could. “Alex got off the drugs, so he went to court looking 10 years younger than he was,” he says.<\/p>\n The rest of the weight he’d gained came off “slowly by fasting and minimal exercise, because I didn’t want to put pressure on my heart,” he says. “When you to start to feel the end of shooting coming, there’s an anxiousness to get the wig off, to get the weight off. It was like, ‘Make sure the camera’s ready, because I’ll go there, but please don’t make me do this too many times.’ “<\/p>\n