Evan Peters stayed in character "for months" to prepare for his role as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the Netflix series "Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story."
The revelation was made Saturday during a panel attended by Peters, as well as filmmaker Ryan Murphy and co-stars Niecy Nash. Speaking to attendees, Peters recalled how, after receiving the script, he watched Dahmer's 1994 interview on "Dateline" in order to "dive into the psychology of that extreme side of human behavior," Variety reported.
It took four months of prep and another six months of shooting before wrapping up the series and during that time, Murphy described how Peters wore lead weights around his arms and lifts in his shoes to mimic Dahmer's physicality and "basically stayed in this character, as difficult as it was, for months.
Peters noted that Dahmer "has a very straight back. He doesn't move his arms when he walks, so I put weights on my arms to see what that felt like."
"I wore the character shoes with lifts in them, his jeans, his glasses, I had a cigarette in my hand at all times," he said. "I wanted all this stuff, these external things, to be second nature when we were shooting, so I watched a lot of footage and I also worked with a dialect coach to get down his voice. The way that he spoke, it was very distinct and he had a dialect."
Peters further explained that he created an audio composite of Dahmer speaking, which was "very helpful."
"I listened to that every day, in hopes of learning his speech patterns, but really, in an attempt to try to get into his mindset and understand that each day that we were shooting," he continued. "It was an exhaustive search, trying to find private moments, times where he didn't seem self-conscious, so you could get a glimpse into how he behaved prior to these interviews and being in prison."
Nash recalled a moment at the beginning of filming when she approached Peters to say hello and realized he was "in his process."
"I wanted to respect that and I wanted to keep him there," she said, turning to the actor. "I prayed for you a lot, for real, because this is weighty. And when you stay in it, and you're tethered to the material, like bone to marrow, your soul is troubled at some point. And I could see him getting tired. I just said, 'Well, I'm just gonna make sure I keep him in my prayers, because this is a lot and he wants to do it justice.'"
Peters previously opened up about the challenges of taking on the role of Dahmer, saying that it was one of the hardest things he's had to do in his career so far.
"I was very scared about all of the things that Dahmer did, and diving into that and trying to commit to playing this character 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 said in an interview with Netflix.
"But in order to do that, I was going to have to go to really dark places and stay there for an extended period of time."
He added: "I have to say that the crew was instrumental in keeping me on the guard rails, I cannot thank them enough and I could not have done any of this role with them...It was a challenge to try to have this person who was seemingly so normal but underneath all of it, had this entire world that he was keeping secret from everybody."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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