Psycho. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The Silence of the Lambs.
All three of these groundbreaking films have drawn inspiration from the real story of Ed Gein, the notorious serial killer and grave robber who stalked the frozen fields of rural Wisconsin in the 1950s. His gruesome crimes have haunted Hollywood for decades. And now Monster: The Ed Gein Story — the latest season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Emmy-nominated anthology series — will peel back the curtain on one of history’s most notorious ghouls, played by Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam.
The full trailer, which debuts above, shows that Monster: The Ed Gein Story is not only interested in whether monsters are born or created — it also explores why we’re drawn to these stories, despite the nightmares they cause.
“You’re the one who can’t look away,” says Hunnam’s Ed Gein, breaking the fourth wall in the final moments of the trailer. This is after the audience has been given a harrowing preview of some of the horrific things Gein did.
Premiering Oct. 3, Monster: The Ed Gein Story chronicles how isolation, psychosis, and an all-consuming obsession with his mother, Augusta (Laurie Metcalf), turned Gein into someone capable of murder — and turning his victims’ corpses into masks and suits. Because of Gein’s impact on Hollywood, Murphy and Brennan thought he was the right subject to follow Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
“Once we talked about how influential he was and how his crimes, you can find threads of them through pop culture and through horror films — I think that’s when we knew we had a show,” says Brennan, who wrote every episode. “It’s really mind-blowing how influential one strange man in the middle of Wisconsin in a barn can be. That’s just the world we live in, that he lit this fuse that just continued popping off and set in motion this continuous topping of really intense, bizarre, strange imagery. I can’t think of another person who is really that influential to a genre of television and film.”
To become Gein, Hunnam read and watched everything he could on his subject and underwent a significant physical transformation. “I lost almost 30 pounds just to get a more malnourished, light frame. Ed was incredibly lithe. And so that was a big part of the physicality,” says Hunnam. “I spent a lot of time thinking about where his energy was, that he’s not particularly confident or, like, front-foot type of energy … How to not take up a lot of space, not to be sort of front and center and too confident in my physicality was really important.”
Hunnam’s portrayal, especially his high-pitched voice, was also informed by Gein’s unhealthy relationship with his mother (see: how he lies beside her grave in one of the photos), who tells him she wanted a daughter. “It was what Ed thought that his mother wanted him to be. As she was really his only human contact in the world, he developed this thing to try and make her love him,” Hunnam says.
In addition to Hunnam and Metcalf, Monster: The Ed Gein Story stars Suzanna Son as Ed’s only friend, Adeline, and Tom Hollander as Psycho director Alfred Hitchcock, both of whom you can spot in the new photos. The trailer also reveals that Addison Rae will appear as Evelyn, a babysitter who was allegedly one of Gein’s victims. Rae was drawn to the project because of the talent in front of and behind the camera.
“I’m such a big fan of Charlie and he’s so amazing. And Laurie and Suzanna — I got to work with so many people that I’ve loved their work,” she says. “I’ve never worked on a production that felt so intentional in every piece. And I think that is really inspiring to be around.”
Prepare to enter Ed Gein’s house of horrors when all eight episodes of Monster: The Ed Gein Story premiere Oct. 3 on Netflix.
