Charlie Hunnam Was ‘Terrified’ to Play Ed Gein: ‘Seemed Impossible’ (Exclusive)

Charlie Hunnam sat down with “Extra” to talk “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” which is taking Netflix by storm.

Season 3 of Ryan Murphy’s biographical crime-drama anthology series focuses on convicted murderer, grave robber, and suspected serial killer Ed Gein, who inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Charlie said of taking the part, “I've never really been that interested in horror. And on the surface, this wouldn't seem like a character that I'd be interested in playing, frankly. But I really recognize the enormous challenge of it. And as I get older, I just want to do better and better work and I want to be really engaged by trying to do hard things in my life. And I thought this character seemed impossible for me to be able to play, and I was terrified and I thought, ‘Alright, well, that's a pretty good place to start.’”

He also spoke about wanting to understand Gein, and wanting the audience to take something useful from the portrayal.

Hunnam said the most challenging part was “understanding him and figuring out a way to make it a human being and not just a parody of evil.”

The actor went on, “I do believe the storytelling has an important function that it reflects back to us certain truths that are confusing about the human condition and we can learn a little something about ourselves and, unfortunately, evil and darkness exists in the world. And so, I wanted this to be an honest portrayal of how a human being can become a monster.”

Charlie looked for “relatable elements of him that we can sort of demonstrate to the audience, so you can feel like, ‘I understand this person. I know this person.’ So then when we get into the stuff that's not relatable at all it can be kind of shocking, but you can somehow understand how it happened in maybe like a cautionary-type of tale.”

Hunnam said, “This was about abuse that had never been healed, and it was about isolation and the consequence of that, and it was about mental health being untreated.”

On a lighter note, he reacted to Dakota Johnson giving him a hard time about dropping out of “50 Shades of Grey” years ago. 

He shared, “I try not to live with any regrets. And that was a very personal and difficult decision to make. And I felt ultimately like I didn't torture myself by ever going and watching the movies. So, I don't really have any opinion about them, but I got to say I have some regrets in my career of things that I turned down. I look back and go, ‘Oh, boy, that was a mistake.’”