Netflix just released another true crime drama, DAHMER: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story starring Emmy-winning actor, Evan Peters.
Created by American Horror Story showrunner, Ryan Murphy, the miniseries was slammed by fans and relatives of the victims for "retraumatizing" the victims' families.
Peters himself admitted that playing Dahmer took an emotional toll on him. Here's why.
How Evan Peters Prepared To Play Jeffrey Dahmer
When Peters received a call from Murphy about the role of Dahmer in the series, the actor quickly jumped into his research. "I immediately went to YouTube – he [Murphy] told me also to watch the Stone Phillips interview, and so I watched that," the X-Men star said in an interview posted on Netflix's YouTube channel.
"I found on YouTube some audio of what sounds like a psychologist interviewing him, or even a detective, where he's relaying what he went through. And the way that he's speaking is very candid and very normal."
He added that he was "scared" about the things Dahmer did, which made it difficult to step into the character. "Honestly, I was very scared about all of the things that he did, and diving into that and trying to commit to that was absolutely going to be one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life because I wanted it to be very authentic," he shared. "But in order to do that, I was gonna have to go to really dark places and stay there for an extended period of time."
"To get lost in that, it was a challenge to try to have this person who seemingly was so normal, but underneath all of it, had this entire world that he was keeping secret from everybody," he continued, noting that Murphy had one rule throughout filming. "So, we had one rule going into this from Ryan that it would never be told from Dahmer's point of view."
In 2021, while filming the limited series, Peters told Variety that he did "so much" research about Dahmer. It got to a point where he had to stop himself. "I've read so much, I've watched so much, I've seen so much, and at a certain point, you've got to say, 'All right, that's enough,'" he revealed, noting that they didn't want the series to come off as a documentary. "There are beautifully written scripts. You can have all the backstory you want, but at the end of the day we're not making a documentary."
"It's more about maintaining the idea and the through line of why you're telling the story and always having that as your guiding light," he explained. "But, there's so much material for Dahmer that I think it's incredibly important to make it really authentic. So I have been doing a lot of research, and it’s interesting, playing him or Colin or even going into Horror Story or WandaVision, where is that line?"
He continued: "You can play around with levels of naturalism and understatedness, versus the zany, over-the-top, 'this is very clearly a TV show meant for entertainment.' It's almost a scene by scene, episode by episode, moment by moment basis, deciding, 'OK yeah he did that there in real life' or 'No he didn't do that there, but that's OK because it works for the story we're trying to tell."
Why Netflix's 'DAHMER: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story' Is So Controversial
When Netflix dropped The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a relative Errol Lindsey — one of the victims — tweeted that the show is "cruel" for "retraumatizing" their family. "I'm not telling anyone what to watch, I know true crime media is huge rn, but if you're actually curious about the victims, my family (the Isbell's) are pissed about this show," wrote Eric Perry. "Like recreating my cousin having an emotional breakdown in court in the face of the man who tortured and murdered her brother is WILD."
In another post, he said: "It's retraumatizing over and over again, and for what? How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?" He also claimed that teams behind true crime projects "don't notify families when they do this" since it's "all public record." As a result, his "family found out when everyone else did."
"So when they say they're doing this 'with respect to the victims’ or ‘honoring the dignity of the families,' no one contacts them," he continued. "My cousins wake up every few months at this point with a bunch of calls and messages and they know there’s another Dahmer show. It's cruel."
Peters defended the show, saying: "As an audience, you're not really sympathizing with him, you're not really getting into his plight, you're sort of watching it from the outside. It's called the Jeffrey Dahmer Story, but it's not just him and his backstory. It's the repercussions. It's how society and our system failed to stop him multiple times, because of racism, homophobia... it's just a tragic story. Everybody gets their side of the story told."
