Despites playing a gruesome, cannibalistic serial murderer in Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Evan Peters hopes to try starring in a rom-com next, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
At an event for the show on Thursday, series creator Ryan Murphy said that before taking on the part of Dahmer, Peters told him that he wanted to play someone “normal” and maybe do a rom-com. Another one of Peters’ antagonistic roles is Tate Langdon from American Horror Story: Murder House, a show that the two had previously worked together on.
Murphy added that after auditioning around 100 people, Peters agreed to the character, even though he was “terrified of it.” While the series earned the number one spot on Netflix in its first week of release, it also garnered significant backlash.
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From the year 1978 to 1991, Dahmer murdered 17 people, and the show has been criticized for centering his horrific actions over the stories of the victims. Still, Murphy maintains that his aim was not to simply portray Dahmer but “what made him the monster that he became,” which includes white privilege, systemic racism and homophobia.
Controversially, Murphy went on to claim that he reached out to around 20 of the victims’ family and friends for input, “and not a single person responded.” Instead, he said they relied primarily on researchers for the three-and-a-half-year writing process.
However, after the release of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, many of the victims’ families took issue with Netflix and the series for profiting off of tragedy and dramatizing the victims’ stories. Some directly accused the streamer and the show’s creators of failing to reach out to them.
In the end, we can all get behind the prospect of Netflix casting Evan Peters as someone “normal” rather than churning out yet another serial killer show.
Photo courtesy of Owen Kolasinski/BFA