Monster Season 3 star Charlie Hunnam believes the show tells Ed Gein’s story in a “sincere” way, but some fans don’t agree.
Ryan Murphy’s Monster is no stranger to controversy after focusing on Jeffrey Dahmer in Season 1, and the Menendez brothers in Season 2.
The third season explores Gein’s shocking crimes that inspired classic horror movies like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs, but the show has faced criticism online, with many true crime fans claiming it sensationalizes the serial killer.
But Hunnam, who plays Gein, defends Monster for depicting him “honestly.”
Charlie Hunnam says Monster wasn’t trying to create “shock impact”
The British actor, who’s best known for playing Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy, defended Monster and its depiction of Gein.
“I never felt like we were sensationalizing it. I never felt on set that we did anything gratuitous or for shock impact,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was all in order to try to tell this story as honestly as we could.”
The show features numerous graphic scenes of Gein wearing his mother’s underwear and pleasuring himself, murdering victims, and robbing graves.
Despite the controversy, Hunnam believes that Monster will get audiences talking, which inevitably leads to more people watching the series.
“If people are compelled to talk about it and think about it, hopefully they’ll actually be compelled to watch the show,” he says. “What I would hope and feel really confident in is that it was a very sincere exploration of the human condition and why this boy did what he did.”
Monster branded a “disgusting mistelling” of Ed Gein tale
Netflix viewers are certainly talking about it, but not much of it is as positive as Hunnam would probably like.
One fan called Monster “false and made up,” and another branded it a “disgusting mistelling.” A third blasted the show because it “glamorized Gein and made him out to be a good man.”
Ian Brennan, the show’s co-creator and the writer behind Season 3, also defended the series, telling The Hollywood Reporter: “This show is always trying to not be exploitative. It’s trying to actually show that you can pull back too much when you’re telling a macabre story.
“It’s important that you tell the whole story even with the parts that are hard to watch.”
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