Evan Peters Stayed in Character "For Months" to Prepare for 'Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story'

Evan Peters and Ryan Murphy revealed that the actor stayed in character “for months” as preparation for his role as Jeffrey Dahmer in the Netflix series, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

In a recent panel, Peters explained that he was debating taking on the part as he “knew it was going to be incredibly dark and an incredible challenge.” The 35-year-old shared that he watched the serial killer’s 1994 Dateline interview to “dive into the psychology of that extreme side of human behavior” after receiving the scripts, with Murphy adding that during the four months of preparation and six months of shooting, Peters would wear lead weights around his arms and lifts in his shoes to emulate Dahmer’s physicality. He “basically stayed in this character, as difficult as it was, for months,” Murphy said.

Evans dove deeper into his groundwork for Dahmer, noting, “He 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 added that he also watched a lot of Dahmer footage and worked with a dialect coach to really nail the character, “The way that he spoke, it was very distinct and he had a dialect. So I also went off and created this 45-minute audio composite, 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. 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.”

Elsewhere in entertainment, Henry Cavill is being replaced by Liam Hemsworth in The Witcher.