'I was trying to push myself to my limits,' the actor said.
Following the success of Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the true-crime series about the serial killer's gruesome crimes which became a massive hit on Netflix, Evan Peters is sharing what it was like to get into character and take on such an intense project.
"I was terrified. I went back and forth on whether I should do it or not," Peters said of taking on the role, which required him to embody the real-life killer who murdered 17 men and teenage boys over a 13-year period before being arrested and brought to justice in 1991.
During a conversation hosted by co-creator Ryan Murphy, it was revealed that the 35-year-old actor previously known for his breakout roles on American Horror Story, stayed in character during the entire time of filming the limited series.
"Evan was so deep in character," Murphy said before Peter's co-star, Niecy Nash, who portrayed neighbor Glenda Cleveland, shared how she went up to the actor after it was all done and said, "Evan Peters, it's nice to meet you."
"People would say, 'What is Evan like?' And I would say, 'I don't know. I don't know the man,'" Nash said while also sharing that she respected her co-star's process and his need to stay in character.
"I was trying to push myself to my limits," Peters responded, wanting to give his all to the role and to the series. And in doing so, the actor even wore weights on his arms and in his shoes and worked with a dialect coach to capture Dahmer's physicality.
"He has a very straight back and he doesn't move his arms when he walks, so I put weights on my arms to see what that would feel like and I wore the character's shoes with lifts in it," Peters said, explaining, "I wanted all this stuff, these external things to be second nature when we were shooting."
Peters continued by saying, "Doing the role, I wanted to give it a 120 percent the whole way through."
But in order to get through that, he kept the "end goal in sight, knowing when we were going to wrap and finally being able to breathe and go, 'OK, now it's time to bring in the joy and the lightness,'" Peters shared, revealing that he watched "comedies and romances" like Step Brothers before going back to his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, to see his family and friends.
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