When asked to pick the toughest moment from the making of DAHMER –– Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Golden Globe winner Evan Peters admitted at a SAG Awards panel Thursday, “It was all pretty hard.” But if they had to choose one, Peters and his co-star Niecy Nash agreed that the heartbreaking sequences involving Jeffrey Dahmer’s murder of 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (Kieran Tamondong) were the most difficult.
“It is not the natural order of things that parents bury children,” said Nash, discussing the emotional weight of filming Sinthasomphone’s funeral. “My only brother was murdered in 1993, and I watched my mother like a hawk, and that pain and grief is something that you have to be in to know it. So as soon as I walked [into the scene,] and the mother was wailing, I had to look at that father and say, ‘I tried to get this baby back’ — and to feel culpable in the fact that I was not successful, it broke my heart. That broke Niecy’s heart. Glenda was feeling the way she was feeling, and I was right there next to her, piling on.”
Production on the true-crime series often felt “so painful” that Nash said many days left her “teary-eyed,” but her one respite was when her real-life daughter, Dia Nash, was on set to play Glenda’s child, Sandra. “When kids are around, it’s so above their heads,” Nash shared. “I’m in the corner, trying to get myself together, and my daughter’s like, ‘Hey, Mom, want to do a TikTok?’ And the next thing you know, it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, we’re ticking and tocking. For me, it brought such a lightness to the space — and I needed it.”
Created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, DAHMER, the first installment in the Monster anthology series, tracks the killing spree of Dahmer (Peters) and the growing suspicions of his neighbor, Glenda (Nash). Since the duo didn’t share many lengthy scenes — outside of the “notorious” sandwich back-and-forth — the opportunities to see each other’s work up close were quick and minimal. But for Peters, the final product blew him away.
“The first thing I did after I watched the series was I called Ryan and said, ‘Niecy is phenomenal,’” he told Nash. “Two scenes come to mind, and one is with Jesse Jackson (Nigel Gibbs), where you’re breaking down; it is gut-wrenching, and you see all of your pain in that moment. And also, in the hallway with the cops, and you’re screaming and so emotional and so upset that you called and they didn’t listen, and, to me, that embodies the whole message of the series. And it was just absolutely beautiful the work that you did.”
For her part, Nash enjoyed the times when Peters was “trying to put the lid on the pot,” as Dahmer attempted to charm his way out of situations where his secret life was on the verge of being discovered. Many of the pair’s run-ins happened in the space between their characters’ apartments, and one sequence that particularly stood out for Nash was Glenda attempting to grab Jeffrey’s attention in the hallway.
“You kept walking, and I said, ‘Jeff,’ and you slow-turned around,” recounted an animated Nash, nearly jumping out of her seat. “I said, ‘Oh, shit!’ Because, without doing a lot, you did the most.… It made Glenda step back and say, ‘Ooh, let me clutch my pearls.’ I love the intensity that you would bring in these moments where you would say so much while saying so little.”
