This article contains spoilers for the finale of \u201cMurdaugh: Death in the Family.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Jason Clarke insists he\u2019s not a method actor, but to take on the role of Alex Murdaugh, he became so immersed in the world of the disgraced lawyer and convicted killer that he often dreamed about him.<\/p>\n
The role of Alex in Hulu\u2019s \u201cMurdaugh: Death in the Family<\/a>\u201d demanded a lot of Clarke \u2014 mastery of a South Carolinian accent, adoption of Southern charm, significant weight gain and the emotional stamina to tap into the psyche of a man who killed his wife and child.<\/p>\n Clarke reveled in the challenge. \u201cLike a Sherlock Holmes sleuth,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019ve got to crack it.\u201d<\/p>\n That meant Clarke spent hours thinking about Alex\u2019s perspective on the crumbling of his family\u2019s legal dynasty, the investigations into his finances, the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul, and his eventual trial.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just started to sit inside me,\u201d he said on a Zoom call from New York in October. As Clarke was developing his version of Alex, his extensive work led him \u201cto dream about it, to think about it, to justify him, to listen to that court case, to argue his way out of it, to find the mistakes or the injustices that he suffered in the trial that I thought I heard or saw.\u201d<\/p>\n His dreams primarily revolved around the trial \u2014 arguments between Alex and his legal team, evidence that was contested and Alex\u2019s fixation on justification for his actions.<\/p>\n \u201cMurdaugh: Death in the Family,\u201d which released its finale Wednesday, dramatizes the years-long mysteries surrounding the family, including a deadly boat crash, the sudden death of the family\u2019s housekeeper, serious financial crimes and the murders of Maggie and Paul. Co-starring with Clarke are Patricia Arquette as Maggie, Johnny Berchtold as Paul and Will Harrison as Alex\u2019s eldest son, Buster.<\/p>\n Beyond the emotional character work Clarke did, which included studying the recordings of the trial, reading books on psychology, and working with dialect coach Tim Monich, Clarke underwent a physical transformation to become Alex. He gained about 40 pounds, wore a wig and dyed his eyebrows since he did not want to rely on prosthetics. The physicality of the character helped everything click into place.<\/p>\n Clarke spent months preparing to play the disgraced Murdaugh family patriarch. <\/p>\n (Rick Wenner \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a method actor, but you\u2019re allowing it to creep into you, you know what I mean? You\u2019re allowing yourself to creep into it,\u201d he said. \u201cAll of a sudden, you become the reflection you see, with the lenses on, with the hair, with the makeup, with the weight, the suit, with the clothes, that all of a sudden, hang on. I am what I am. And there\u2019s nowhere I won\u2019t or can\u2019t go.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarke is no stranger to playing characters based on real-life people \u2014 he portrayed Sen. Ted Kennedy<\/a> in the 2017 film \u201cChappaquiddick,\u201d Lakers general manager Jerry West<\/a> in the HBO series \u201cWinning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,\u201d mountaineer Rob Hall in 2015\u2019s \u201cEverest\u201d and attorney Roger Robb in 2023\u2019s \u201cOppenheimer\u201d to name a few.<\/p>\n Series co-creator and showrunner Michael D. Fuller said Clarke\u2019s performance in \u201cOppenheimer\u201d showed him Clarke could pull off the challenging role. Although the characters are very different, Fuller said he saw the \u201cphysicality, the confidence, the masculinity\u201d required to play Alex in that performance. And Fuller\u2019s hunch proved correct \u2014 at least in the eyes of Mandy Matney, the journalist whose podcast provided source material for the series and who was an executive producer on it. According to co-creator Erin Lee Carr, Matney \u201cwould get a chill in her body because she felt like she was looking at and talking to Alex Murdaugh.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s just one of our best living actors,\u201d Fuller said. \u201cThere\u2019s always something human about him, there\u2019s always something confident about him, and then there can be something scary about him. That\u2019s why I think he was singular for this part.\u201d<\/p>\n The series\u2019 finale was the ultimate test of Clarke\u2019s skills. It follows the theatrics of Alex\u2019s trial and depicts the full sequence where Maggie and Paul are murdered. Their murders were first depicted in an earlier episode, but the audience doesn\u2019t see the killer in that instance. However, in the finale, Alex is depicted as the perpetrator.<\/p>\n In the courtroom scenes, much of Clarke\u2019s dialogue is lifted directly from court transcripts. \u201cOh, what a tangled web we weave,\u201d Alex says in response to the prosecutor questioning why he lied about his whereabouts on the night of the murders. <\/p>\n That line, Fuller said, is \u201con the nose, but it\u2019s also spot-on.\u201d Striking a balance between what statements Alex and others made and taking creative license was all about \u201cfinding those little breadcrumbs that give it that sense of reality and authenticity.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarke said he poured over recordings of the trial, listening to them first before he watched the videos, partly as a way to nail down the specificities of Alex\u2019s accent and cadence. Re-creating moments shown or discussed in documentaries, podcasts and in the frenzy of news coverage about the case felt like an important piece of the dramatization for Clarke. If he looked like Alex and talked like Alex and some of the most memorable moments were word-perfect, \u201cthen the rest of what we build will have much more authenticity and believability,\u201d Clarke said.<\/p>\n The moments that haven\u2019t been documented \u2014 what family life looked like inside the Murdaugh home, what Maggie and Alex\u2019s marriage was like behind closed doors and what exactly happened on the night of the murders \u2014 are where Clarke, the cast and the writers needed to rely on the trust they had built with the audience. <\/p>\n A methodical, yet simplistic approach to filming the murder sequence in the finale was important to both Clarke and the co-creators. Fuller said on the two nights they spent filming that scene, the cast and crew took a moment to acknowledge the real-life victims and the event they were about to dramatize and ensure they were \u201ctreating it with the reverence and sensitivity it requires.\u201d<\/p>\n As Alex is shown carrying out the murders, he acts quickly and surely, and his face is nearly emotionless.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want to do things that don\u2019t need to be done because you undermine the rest of it,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cThere\u2019s a coldness to what happened. It was the act itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarke said shooting that scene was \u201cnot something you want to do too many times.\u201d What seems to have struck him the hardest, especially as a father of two sons, was that Murdaugh didn\u2019t \u201chave to be filled with hate or anger\u201d to kill his family members. In the series, Paul gets a glimpse of Alex just before he deals the final blow, which is a moment that Clarke wanted to emphasize. \u201cThat\u2019s the full horror,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Although Clarke knew much of his work on the series would be heavy, he also knew that \u201cthe rest of it was fun,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of joy and fun and games and entertainment and lunacy.\u201d<\/p>\n (Rick Wenner \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n The actor referenced his work on the 2019 horror movie \u201cPet Sematary,\u201d in which he plays a father whose daughter is killed (and then resurrected with a new, disturbing demeanor), saying those types of roles have become increasingly challenging to perform. Clarke said, \u201cI don\u2019t know how much more of that I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/fa05eaa\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/7798x5201+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Faf%2F31%2F20e8cc8144f4a096edec942666cd%2F1525390-et-jason-clarke-6861.jpg)
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